POPERY 


AND 


M8ITISI: 


BEING  TWO  DISCOURSES 


Prepared  agreeable  to  a  Resolution  of  the  Synod  of  Pitta- 
burgh  of  1843 ;  and  preached  before-  that  Body,  at 
Pittsburgh,  September,  1844. 


BY  THE 
RET.  DOCTORS  GREEN  AND  MAOIIili. 


PITTSBURGH: 

PUBLISHED  BY  ORDER  OF  SYNOD. 

LUKE  LOOM1S,  Agent: 


1844. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1844,  by 

Luke  Loomis,  Agent, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  United 

States  in  and  for  the  Western  District  of  Pennsylvania 


THE 


RIGHT    OF 

PRIVATE  JUDGMENT: 

OR, 

FREEDOM   OF  INDIVIDUAL 

OPINION  AND  BELIEF. 

A  SERMON, 


Preached  in  the  Firsb  Presbyterian  Church,  Pittshurgh, 
on  the  Evening  of  Friday,  20th  Sept.  1844: 

BY  L.  W.  GREEN, 

PROFESSOR  WESTERN  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY. 


"  I  speak  as  unto  wise  men ;  judge  ye  what  I  say." 
1st  Corinthians  10,  15. 


THE    RIGHT   OF 

PRIVATE  JUDGMENT, 


In  every  great  conflict  for  the  mastery  of  the 
"world,  which  has  deeply  stirred  the  minds  of  men, 
and  widely  influenced  the  destiny  of  the  race,  the 
real  combatants  have  been  antagonist  principles; 
and  the  mightiest  leaders,  in  the  great  struggles  of 
their  age,  have  gathered  the  masses  around  them, 
and  wielded  them  at  pleasure — only  as  the  repre- 
sentatives, or  rather  the  living  embodiments,  of  the 
principles  they  loved.  In  that  general  movement  of 
the  human  mind,  which  signalized  the  sixteenth 
century — which  revolutionized  the  whole  intellec- 
tual, moral  and  social  condition  of  mankind,  and 
gave  that  new  impulse  to  the  progress  of  the  race; 
of  which  our  own  civil  and  religious  institutions 
are  at  once  the  noblest  product  and  happiest  exem- 
plification— the  opposing  principles  of  the  contend- 
ing parties  were  boldly  and  broadly  emblazoned  on 
the  hostile  banners.  On  the  one  side,  stood  forth 
luminously  there,  in  bright  and  glorious  transpa- 
rency— radiant  with  the  mingled  light  of  earth  and 
heaven,  and  shedding  its  benignant  influence  on  all 
human  interests — that  fundamental  principle — the 
basis  of  all  pure  morality  and  all  true  religion — of 
a2 


0  THE    RIGHT  OF 

all  personal  independence,  and  all  national  free, 
dom — "The  Right  of  Private  Judgment" — Free- 
dom of  Individual  Belief — an  open  Bible — a  Free 
Press — unfettered  Liberty  of  Thought,  of  Inquiiy, 
of  Discussion — for  every  human  being,  of  every 
sect  and  party — for  the  Layman  as  well  as  for  the 
Priest;  while  on  the  other,  was  engraven  in  gloomy 
capitals  upon  a  dark  back-ground — faintly  ilium-, 
ined  by  the  fires  of  the  Inquisition — this  porten- 
tous dogma — the  favorite  principle  of  all  Despots 
both  in  Church  and  State — "The  Supreme  Author- 
ity of  the  Church"— "Implicit  Faith— Absolute 
Submission" — "that  most  pestilential  error,  Lib- 
erty of  Conscience" — "that  pest,  of  all  others  most 
to  be  dreaded,  unbridled  Liberty  of  Opinion" — 
"that  worst  and  never  sufficiently  to  be  execrated 
and  detested  Liberty  of  the  Press,"*  and  "we  for- 
bid that  any  Layman  shall  ever  be  permitted  in 
public  or  in  private,  to  discuss  the  Catholic  Faith; 
and  whoever  shall  disregard  this  prohibition,  let 
him  be  hung  up  in  the  halter  of  excommunica- 
tion"— "Laqueo  Excommunicationis  Innodetur"\ 
The  simple  annunciation  of  these  opposing  prin- 
ciples sufficiently  indicates  their  origin,  and  bears 
along  with  it  their  own  appropriate  and  ample  com- 
mentary. The  one,  you  perceive  at  once,  is  the 
language  of  Power:  the  other  is  the  Claim  of  Right. 
The  one  is  the  Voice  of  the  Priesthood — the  other, 
the  Remonstrance  of  the  People.  The  one  is  the 
Echo  of  the  Past,  as  it  issues  from  those  dark  ages 

*  Literal  Extracts  from  the  Pope's  Bull  of  1832. 
|  Quoted  by  Pens  and  Bishop  Hughes  from  Pope  Alex- 
ander IV. 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  7 

of  Priestly  Domination,  Sottish  Ignorance  and 
Ghostly  Superstition.  The  other  is  the  Living 
Voice  of  the  awakening  intelligence  of  Europe,  as 
the  night  of  centuries  rolls  away,  and  the  morning 
of  a  new,  and  higher,  and  holier  civilization  beams 
upon  their  eyes.  One  is  thundered  from  the  VatU 
can;  is  muttered  from  the  dungeons  of  the  Inqui- 
sition; is  enforced  at  the  point  of  the  Imperial  Bay. 
onet.  The  other  is  the  loud  shout  of  emancipated 
millions,  as  their  fetters  drop  away — as  they  look 
around  on  this  fair  earth,  and  above,  at  this  broad 
sky — and  with  mysterious  wonder  and  delight,  on 
the  unsealed  volume  of  Revelation — and  in  the 
consciousness  of  new-born  vigor  and  newly-dis- 
covered rights — exclaim,  all  together,  "Oh!  no! 
It  cannot  be!  We  too  are  men;  and  God  never 
made  these  free  souls  of  ours  to  be  the  bondslaves 
of  the  Priesthood  ;  the  blind  recipients  of  their 
dogmas,  or  the  abject  registers  of  their  decrees!" 
It  is  the  mighty  outburst  of  those  electric  thoughts 
which  had  been  gathering  long,  and  blackening 
silently  in  the  minds  of  men,  and  only  waited  for 
a  fit  conductor,  to  discharge  their  accumulated 
thunders  on  the  high  places  of  Idolatry  and  Sin, 
and  startle  those  self-constituted  Lords  of  the  faith 
and  the  consciences  of  men,  from  their  long  and 
guilty  dream  of  Universal  Dominion.  Here,  then, 
is  the  great  question  for  the  country  and  for  the 
age,  the  question  of  questions,  for  ourselves  and  our 
children,  which,  for  the  next  fifty  years,  shall 
arouse  the  energies  of  the  mightiest  minds;  in  the 
light  or  the  gloom  of  which,  all  inferior  questions 
shall  be  swallowed  up;  before  whose  overwhelming 


ti  THB    RIGHT   OF 

energy  and  absorbing  interest,  all  minor  interests 
shall  be  forgotten,  and  all  the  barriers  of  Sect  and 
Party  disappear;  the  only|question,jindeed,  in  which 
we  all  alike  are  interested:  "Whether  man — ra- 
tional, immortal*  accountable  man,  created  in  God's 
image  and  redeemed  by  the  bloodsof  His  Son — 
does  possess  the  right,  and  the  duty  too,  to  read, 
think,  inquire,  reason,  judge,  decide — freely  and 
independently  for  himself — in  all  that  concerns  his 
present  welfare  and  eternal  destiny;  or  whether 
he  has  been,  indeed,  consigned,  in  God's  myste- 
rious wisdom,  to  Lords,  spiritual  and  temporal,  by 
right  of  immemorial  succession  and  legitimate 
consecration,  for  ihe  guardianship  of  his  temporal 
and  eternal  interests?" 

You  perceive,  then,  that  there  is  a  great  gulf 
between  us — immeasurable — unfathomable — that 
the  difference  between  these  fundamental  princi- 
ples, thus  arrayed  in  direct  and  undisguised  antag- 
onism, extends  beyond  any  mere  difference  of  in- 
dividual doctrines  or  even  of  a  whole  class  of  doc- 
trines, and  reaches  the  very  foundations  of  human 
opinion — the  very  basis  of  human,  belief  itself. 
On  the  one  side,  it  is  "Absolute  Authority;"  on 
the  other,  "Rational  Conviction."  It  goes  far  be- 
yond the  interpretation  of  any  one  passage,  or  any 
class  of  passages  in  God's  word,  and  touches  the 
very  right  to  read  and  interpret  that  word  at  all. 
Nay,  in  the  wide  sweep  of  the  broad  and  universal 
propositions,  which  they  severally  affirm,  it  over- 
leaps the  mere  boundaries  of  theological  discus- 
sion; stretches  over  the  whole  wide  domain  of  hu- 
man thought;  cuts  through  and  through  the  whole 


PRIVATE    JUDG3IENT.  V 

of  human  interests  and  human  destiny;  reaches  the 
very  springs  of  moral  agency  and  the  foundation 
of  human  rights;  and  involves  all  that  is  dearest  to 
the  citizen  and  the  freeman  as  well  as  to  the  Chris- 
tian. It  is  to  this  wider  aspect  of  the  general 
subject  that  we  propose  to  direct  our  inquiries  this 
evening. 

And  here,  on  the  very  threshhold  of  our  argu- 
ment, we  are  met  by  the  same  strange  and  almost 
ludicrous  phenomenon,  which  reappears  again  and 
again  in  the  history  of  human  folly;  where  some 
stupendous  absurdity  is  found  to  be,  not  only  false, 
but  suicidal;  and  denies  itself  in  the  very  terms  of 
its  enunciation.  Thus:  the  universal  sceptic,  who 
denies  the  reality  of  all  truth,  denies,  at  the  same 
time,  the  truth  of  his  own  proposition;  which,  if 
true,  is  manifestly  false,  and  only  by  being  a  false- 
hood, could  possibly  be  true.  The  man  who  de- 
nies the  reality  of  his  own  existence,  denies,  at  the 
same  time,  the  reality  of  the  proposition  which  he 
utters.  So  that  the  very  words  of  the  assertion 
necessarily  involve  the  denial  of  the  thing  asserted. 
Very  similar  is  the  condition  of  one  who  denies  the 
right  of  private  Judgment;  the  free  exercise  of 
man's  rational  and  immortal  powers,  in  their  larg- 
est meaning  and  widest  scope;  and  then  attempts, 
by  reasoning,  to  sustain  the  denial.  For  the  very 
attempt  to  defend  his  proposition  is  a  deliberate 
abandonment  of  the  whole;  an  exercise  of  the  very 
right  he  has  just  denied;  an  appeal  to  the  Private 
Judgment  he  had  rejected ;  a  recognition  of  the 
tribunal  he  had  denounced.  He  is  forced  to  as- 
sert what  he  denies,  and  deny  what  he  asserts;  and 


10  THE    EIGHT    OF 

the  larger  the  range  of  his  inquiries,  the  vaster  tha> 
accumulation  of  Ins  knowledge,  the  more  luminous 
the  track  of  his  mind,  as  he  urges  onward  with 
gigantic  energy  this  stupendous  paradox,  the  more 
conclusive  the  refutation  of  himself.  Magnificent 
reasoning,  indeed,  againsl  the  right  of  reasoning  ! 
Forcible  appeals  to  our  private  judgment,  to  prove 
that  no  such  appeal  should  be  ever  made;  or  if 
made,  ever  for  a  moment  entertained  !  Plausible 
•quotations,  forsooth,  from  the  Bible,  which  he  had 
read,  (else  he  quotes  it  as  a  parrot,  without  pro- 
fessing to  ascertain  its  meaning,)  to  prove  that  you 
and  I  should  never  read  it!  Quotations  from  the 
Bible,  to  prove  that  it  is  not  the  rule  of  a  Chris- 
tian's faith,  and  therefore  ought  not  to  be  quoted 
at  all,  as  conclusive  testimony  in  any  argument. 
Powerful  appeals  to  our  own  understanding  and 
interpretation  of  the  Bible,  which  he  quotes, 
for  the  purpose  of  proving,  that  we  have  neither 
the  power  nor  the  right  to  understand  or  interpret 
the  Bible  for  ourselves  at  all.  It  is  as  if  some  in- 
genious madman,  endeavoring  to  persuade  us  that 
we  have  no  power  of  vision,  should  hold  a  lighted 
flambeau  near  our  eyes,  and  failing  in  his  effort, 
should  kindle  a  mighty  conflagration,  or  prepare  a 
brilliant  display  of  fire-works,  and  delighted  with 
the  glare  and  splendor  of  the  exhibition,  should 
exclaim,  in  his  maniac  folly,  "Surely  now,  at  least, 
you  are  convinced — you  must  all  see  that  you  can- 
not see/"  while  to  us,  each  vivid  flash  of  light,  and 
each  mounting  volume  of  flame,  only  called  into 
more  active  exercise,  and  awakened  to  keener  con- 
sciousness, the  very  faculty  whose  existence  he 

I 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  11 

denies  while  proving  it ;  and  whose  exercise  he  at 
the  same  moment  both  invites  and  forbids — stimu- 
lates and  denounces.  Whatever  else  may  be  doubt- 
ful, this  at  least  is  manifest.  My  very  appearance 
amongst  you;  this  evening,  for  the  discussion  of  an 
important  subject,  acknowledges  thus  much:  that 
you  have  the  power  to  hear,  and  the  right  to  exer- 
cise that  power.  But  does  it  not  equally  acknow- 
ledge, that  you  have  the  power  to  investigate,  and 
the  right  to  judge?  Surely  it  were  the  very  mock- 
ery of  reason,  to  say  you  have  the  right  to  hear, 
but  not  to  understand;  to  investigate,  but  not  to 
decide.  Thus  every  step  upon  the  field  of  reason- 
ing abandons  the  ground  of  authority.  Else  rea- 
son were  no  more  reason,  and  authority  were  no 
more  authority. 

This  inextricable  dilemma,  in  which  they  are 
thus  involved— this  indissoluble  connection  be- 
tween the  right  to  reason  and  the  right  to  judge — 
the  right  to  investigate,  and  the  right  to  decide — 
the  right  to  read,  and  to  interpret  what  we  read, 
has  been  distinctly  recognized  by  the  advocates  of 
Absolute  Authority.  And  hence,  Free  Discussion 
is  not  only  discountenanced  abroad,  but  even  in  this 
free  land  of  ours,  is  visited  with  all  the  terrors  of 
excommunication  here;  and  all  the  horrors  of  eter- 
nal fire  hereafter.  In  the  year  1832,  a  petty  Italian 
Despot,  who  unites  in  his  own  person  all  temporal 
and  spiritual  power,  the  present  Pope  Gregory  xvi 
issued  this  papal  Bull,  to  all  his  subjects  through- 
out the  world  —  including  the  United  States — in 
which  he  selects  as  the  objects  of  his  especial  de- 
nunciation, every  principle  which  lies  at  the  basis 


12  THE    RIGHT    OP 

of  our  Political  and  Social  Institutions — the  Free- 
dom of  the  Press — Liberty  of  Opinion — and  com- 
mends, with  earnest  eulogy,  the  union  of  Church 
and  State,  and  the  burning  of  heretical  books,  in 
this  emphatic  language:  "Nor  can  the  materials 
of  error  be  otherwise  destroyed  than  by  the  blames, 
which  consume  the  depraved  elements  of  evil." 

This  strange  ebullition  of  folly  and  ignorance, 
singularly  blended  with  fanatical  insolence  and  ma- 
lignity, was  met  with  one  universal  burst  of  in- 
dignation and  contempt.  From  Maine  to  Florida 
the  nation  was  aroused — and  through  the  Press — 
from  the  Pulpit — in  the  popular  assembly—  where- 
ever  men  met  for  private  intercourse  or  public  con- 
sultation— the  voice  of  an  outraged  public  senti- 
ment was  heard — mingled  with  playful  sarcasm 
and  bitter  derision.  Some  Catholic  young  men  of 
New  York,  stung  by  the  keen  invectives  of  the 
Press — goaded  by  the  perpetual  jeers  of  their  Pro- 
testant companions — perhaps,  warmed  by  the  fresh 
air  of  Freedom,  that  breathed  all  around  them,  and 
deluded  with  the  belief,  that  in  this  free  land,  they 
too  were  free — resolved  to  establish  a  society  for 
the  investigation  and  discussion  of  religious  truth 
— and  thus  to  erect  in  the  city  of  New  York — be- 
fore the  eyes  of  all  men — a  living  monument  of  the 
freedom  which  exists  in  the  Catholic  Church-r- 
and a  refutation,  through  all  coming  time,  of  Pro- 
testant misrepresentations.  In  the  Catholic  Diary 
of  Oct.  1st,  1836,  appeared  a  notice  of  the  forma- 
tion and  objects  of  this  society:  and  a  letter  from 
Bishop  Hughes  on  the  same  subject,  in  the  Truth 
Teller  of  the  following  week.     Does  this  Chi  is- 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  Id 

tian  Bishop  hail  with  joy  these  first  symptoms  of 
awakening  intelligence  and  inquiry  amongst  his 
people?  Does  he  rejoice  to  find  that  the  youth  of 
his  flock  are  turning  their  feet  away  from  the  play- 
house— the  ball-room— the  fashionable  gaieties  and 
frivolous  amusements — the  dark  and  terrible  temp- 
tations of  that  crowded  and  luxurious  city — and 
now,  at  length,  are  beginning  to  ponder  those 
great  and  eternal  themes,  that  alone  deserve  the 
highest  energies  of  our  immortal  spirit,  and  ele- 
vate and  purity  and  enlarge  the  soul,  that  comes 
into  contact  with  them?  Does  he  cheer  them  by 
his  applauding  voice?  Does  he  "point  the  path  to 
truth,  and  lead  the  way?"  Far  otherwise.  He  de- 
nounces the  society  with  unmeasured  severity — de- 
rides their  generous  love  of  knowledge — castigates 
the  Editor,  who  had  dared  to  approve  their  object, 
and  prohibits  absolutely  all  discussion,  except  to 
the  Priesthood.  Hear  how  a  Bishop  dares  to  speak 
in  these  United  States,  and  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury: 
"  To  the  Editor  of  the  Catholic  Diary  : 

"In  the  Catholic  Diary  of  Saturday  last,  October 
1st,  I  find  a  notice  from  you  of  a  society,  calling 
itself  the  New  York  Catholic  Society,  for  the  pro- 
motion of  religious  knowledge.  Of  the  existence 
of  that  society,  I  was  utterly  ignorant,  and  feel  sur- 
prised that  you,  who  ought  to  know  better, 
would  think  of  encouraging  and  drawing  public 
attention  to  such  a  society,  without" — 

Without  what?  Without  a  serious  consideration 
of  the  consequences?  Without  a  calm  conviction 
of  duty?    Is  there  a  Catholic  freeman  in  this  house, 


14  THE    RIGHT    OP 

who  has  escaped  from  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
tyranny  of  Europe,  and  has  hoped  in  this  blessed 
land,  to  find  an  elvsium  of  fr  edom — I  ask  him  to 
answer,  without  what?  "Without  first  ascertain- 
ing the  sentiments  of  your  ordinary"  or  Bishop. 
"The  church  in  the  most  positive  manner,  prohi- 
bits all  laymen  from  entering  into  dispute  on  points 
of  religion  with  sectarians — "Inhibernus,"  says 
Pope  Alexander  iv.,  "ne  unquam  Laicae  Perso- 
nae  liceat  publice  vel  private  de  fide  Catholicadis- 
putare;  qui  vero  contradicerit,  excommunicationis 
laqueo  innodetur."  "We  forbid,"  says  Pope  Alex- 
ander iv.,  "that  any  layman  should  ever  be  allow- 
ed in  public  or  in  private,  to  discuss  the  Catholic 
faith;  and  whosoever  shall  disregard  this  prohibi- 
tion, let  him  be  hung  up  in  the  halter  of  excom- 
munication." Had  you  recollected  this  sentence, 
I  am  sure  you  would  be  far  from  calling  on  the 
Catholic  young  men  of  this  city  to  become  mem- 
bers of  a  debating  society  on  religious  subjects, 
open  to  so  many  serious  objections. 

John,  Bishop  of  New  York." 
And  how  was  this  letter  received?  Was  not  the 
American  spirit  aroused  at  last?  Did  not  the  hot 
blood  boil  in  the  veins  of  these  American  youth, 
at  such  insolent  dictation?  Never  did  scourged 
spaniel  crouch  and  whine  and  fawn  upon  the  foot, 
that  spurned  him — with  more  abject  submission — 
than  did  th^se  independent  youth  and  this  free 
press,  bow  before  the  will  of  this  foreign  emissary 
of  a  foreign  Despot.  And  what  is  the  magic  in- 
fluence, which  thus,  at  the  distance  of  3000  miles, 
can   silence  the  press   and  stifle  the  voices,  and 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  15 

even  paialyze  the  free  thoughts  of  American  citi- 
zens? It  is  the  old  decree  of  a  foreign  monarch, 
long  since  dead  and  buried  and  rotten  in  his  grave, 
and  written  in  a  language  even,  which  has  died  out 
from  among  the  languages  of  living  men.  But 
though  the  Pope  may  die — the  Bull  never  dies. 
This  lives  on  the  same,  ui. changed,  unchangeable, 
perpetuating  from  age  to  age,  and  from  land  to 
land,  the  same  dark  decrees  of  Arbitrary  Power- 
still 

"The  same  wild  Bull 
Which  Priests  and  Demagogues  let  loose 
To  toss  our  Laws  and  Liberties  in  the  air." 

Again:  the  Right  of  Private  Judgment — the  tin- 
fettered  exercise  of  our  rational  faculties,  on  every 
question  that  concerns  our  temporal  or  eternal  wel- 
fare— the  right  to  think,  reason,  examine,  weigh, 
judge,  decide  freely  for  ourselves,  is  involved  in 
the  very  possession  of  these  faculties.  Just  as  the 
right  to  see,  hear,  move,  breathe,  is  involved  in  the 
power  to  perform  these  several  operations.  For 
these  powers  are  bestowed,  either  that  they  may 
be  exercised  or  may  lie  dormant.  If  that  they  may 
be  exercised,  then  the  right  is  commensurate  with 
the  power,  and  the  duty  co-extensive  with  the 
right — so  that  he  who  interferes  with  either  is  guil- 
ty at  once  of  cruel  injustice  towards  man,  and  dar- 
ing impiety  against  God — injustice  to  man,  since 
he  denies  a  right,  which  God  has  bestowed;  and 
forbids  a  duty,  which  God  enjoins — and  impiety 
against  God,  since  he  thus  thwans,  as  far  as  human 
power  can  do  it,  the  high  designs  of  Hij  Infinite 
Beneficence.      The  right  to   think    includes   the 


16  THE    RIGHT    OF 

whole  process  of  thought ;  from  the  commence- 
ment to  the  close  ;  from  the  first  rude  materials  of 
thought,  to  the  finished  product;  from  the  first  sim- 
ple facts,  which  constitute  the  elements  of  some 
subordinate  proposition,  to  the  remote  and  ultimate 
conclusion,  which  crowns  the  summit  of  some  high 
fabric  of  reasoning.  The  simple  right  to  think, 
therefore,  includes  all  lor  which  we  contend  ;  for 
surely,  it  were  too  absurd  to  acknowledge  the  right 
to  think,  and  yet  deny  the  right  to  reason,  which 
is  only  consecutive  thought;  to  admit  the  right  to 
reason,  and  yet  deny  the  right  to  decide — or  draw 
conclusions,  which  is  one  of  its  component  parts. 
Yet  this  ultimate  conclusion  of  the  mind,  in  view 
of  all  the  premises,  is  our  Private  Judgment, 
Should  any  still  question  us  concerning  the  source 
of  this  right,  and  the  warrant  to  exercise  it,  our 
answer  is  brief  and  direct.  We  point  him  upward 
to  God,  and  inward  to  the  wonders  of  our  own  bo- 
som ;  and  tell  him,  the  origin  is  there.  The  war- 
rant is  here.  Suppose  some  one  should  seek  to 
draw  a  veil  over  the  outward  eye  of  the  body,  as 
well  as  the  inward  vision  of  the  soul,  and  shut  out 
from  our  view,  the  beauties  and  glories  of  God's 
works,  as  well  as  the  wonders  of  His  word,  and 
then  deny  our  right  to  see  them :  what  would  be 
our  reply?  Would  we  go  to  the  Digest  of  the. 
Statutes  ?  Would  we  point  to  some  decision  of 
our  Courts?  Would  we  invoke  the  testimony  of 
the  Fathers  ?  Would  we  not  tell  him  to  his  face, 
in  language  brief,  bold  and  unanswerable  too,  "the 
right  to  see  is  included  in  the  power  to  see ;  the 
God  who  gave  us  eyes,  gave  us  the  right  to  use 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  17 

them.  You  demand  our  Bill  of  Rights  :  behold  ! 
there  it  is  in  the  autograph  of  Heaven — written  by 
the  finger  of  the  Almighty."  But  surely  if  the 
structure  of  the  eye,  the  beautiful  and  harmonious 
adaptation  of  all  its  parts  to  the  purposes  of  vision, 
be  God's  Charter  of  Rights  for  the  exercise  of  vi- 
sion, the  argument  is  still  more  conclusive  from 
the  structure  of  the  mind — by  so  much  more  con- 
clusive, by  how  much  its  structure  is  more  won- 
derful, its  adaptations  more  various',  its  powers 
more  transcendant;  its  dignily  more  exalted;  its 
destiny,  in  all  respects,  unspeakably  more  glorious. 
Rightly  considered  indeed,  this  is  the  highest  of  all 
possible  evidence.  Were  it  thundered  to  us  fiom 
the  Heavens  above;  were  it  echoed  back  from  the 
depths  of  the  abyss;  were  it  flashed  upon  us  in  the 
forked  lightning;  were  it  whispered  to  us  by  the 
winds  of  the  evening;  were  it  muttered  in  the  mid- 
night tempest;  were  it  engraved  on  the  mountain's 
side;  were  it  written  in  letters  of  living  fire  upon 
the  broad  canopy  above  us;  were  it  blazed  and 
pealed  upon  us  in  dazzling  and  deafening  grand- 
eur from  the  whole  universe  around,  yet  the  evi- 
dence could  not  be  half  so  direct,  so  intimate,  so 
irresistible.  For  behold  it  is  here — it  is  stamped 
upon  our  very  existence;  it  is  interwoven  with  all 
the  elements  of  our  being;  it  is  imbedded  in  the 
constitution  of  our  nature;  it  is  a  necessary  part  in 
every  thought  and  feeling — nay,  it  would  be  pre- 
supposed in  the  very  revelations  designed  to  con- 
firm  it.  Since  all  these  wonders  in  the  Heavens 
and  on  the  Earth,  however  luminous  or  loud,  could 
only  convince  U3  when  understood,  and  only  be 
b2 


18  THE    RIGHT    OF 

understood  when  interpreted  aright — and  this  in- 
terpretation would  be  the  exercise  of  Private  Judg- 
ment—which throws  us  back  at  last  on  this,  as  an 
ultimate  law  of  our  nature,  mingling  with  and  pre- 
supposed in  every  mental  operation,  and  thus  ris- 
ing both  in  its  evidence  and  its  importance,  to  the 
dignity  of  an  intuitive  principle  or  necessary  truth. 
Again:  if  this  right  of  Private  Judgment  be  not 
ours,  then  no  other  right  existing,  possible  or  con- 
ceivable, remains  for  man:  for  this  is  of  all  human 
rights,  the  clearest,  the  most  intimate,  the  most 
indisputable — earlier  than  all  others,  independent 
of  all  others — upon  which  all  beside  are  founded; 
and  from  which,  as  moral  and  logical  corollaries, 
they  do  necessarily  spring.  The  right  of  property 
is  only  a  secondary  right,  resulting  from  the  rights 
of  labor;  and  this  is  but  another  name  for  our  right 
to  the  exercise  and  the  products  of  that  material 
machinery  of  muscles,  bones  and  sinews,  which  we 
call  our  own  and  not  ourselves.  Now  it  is  curious 
to  observe  that  our  right  of  ownership  in  our  bo- 
dies even,  is  not  only  secondary  in  relation  to  an 
anterior  and  far  higher  right ;  but  is  extremely 
transient,  even  when  compared  with  our  property 
in  other  things.  The  house,  which  is  yours  to-day, 
fifty  years  hence  may  still  be  yours — but  the  evan- 
escent title,  which  you  hold  in  that  mass  of  mat- 
ter, which  constitutes  your  budy,  will  long  before 
have  disappeared.  Each  particle  will  have  sought 
some  new  and  separate  combination,  and  gone  to 
mingle  with  the  universe  of  things.  The  source 
and  centre,  then,  of  all  human  rights — whence  all 
originate  and  whither  all  converge,  is  the  immor- 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  19 

tal  soul  of  man,  and  union  with  this,  has  given  to 
the  body  a  participation  of  its  rights.  But  surely 
the  rights  of  the  soul  can  mean  nothing  less  than 
the  untrammelled  exercise  of  all  its  various  powers. 
He,  then,  who  strikes  at  this,  not  only  wounds  the 
first  and  dearest  of  human  rights,  but  aims  a  death 
blow  at  the  whole.  He  who  surrenders  this  at 
the  bidding  of  another,  not  only  is  prepared  to  sur- 
render, but  has  in  the  very  act  surrendered  every 
other  right,  and  is  traitor,  with  a  four-fold  treach- 
ery, to  the  God  who  bestowed  these  invaluable 
rights,  and  committed  them  as  a  precious  deposit 
to  his  guardianship — to  the  country  that  guaran- 
tees them  to  him,  all  unworthy  as  he  is — and  the 
blood  of  our  dead  fathers  so  freely  shed  in  their 
defence — to  his  own  high  powers  and  exalted  des- 
tiny—to the  present  and  future  generations — to 
the  whole  race  of  man.  For  in  this  great  battle 
of  the  world,  he  has  not  merely  spiked  the  cannon 
confided  to  his  care,  but  has  turned  its  fire  on  the 
advancing  columns  of  his  friends.  He  has  not  only 
fled  in  unmanly  cowardice  from  the  post  he  was 
appointed  to  defend,  but  has  betrayed  it  to  the  foe. 
He  has  abandoned  not  only  the  out-works,  but  the 
fortress  of  freedom  itself,  and  received  the  enemy 
into  the  very  heart  of  the  citadel. 

Here,  then,  is  a  new  tyranny,  such  as  the  sun 
never  shone  upon  before  ;  a  tyranny  so  subtle  in 
its  slow  advances  ;  so  terrible  in  the  awfulimystery 
of  its  unfathomable  resources,  that  in  comparison 
with  it,  every  other  form  of  oppression,  which  the 
world  hath  witnessed,  might  well  aspire  to  the 
name  of  perfect  freedom.    There  was  a  time  when 


20  THE    EIGHT    OF 

we  could  proudly  boast,  that  "the  mind  is  its  own 
place."  Amidst  all  the  abounding  tyranny  and 
oppression  in  the  world— the  violence,  the  cruelty, 
the  blood-shed,  we  have  consoled  ouiselves  with 
the  thought,  that  there  is  even  upon  earth  one  spot 
secure  from  all  invasion — which  no  human  power 
can  approach,  no  human  scrutiny  can  penetrate,  no 
tyranny  of  man  can  awe — which  all  the  embattled 
powers  of  the  globe,  with  their  combined  artillery, 
could  never  storm—but  the  Almighty  himself  hath 
shielded  it.  against  all  human  assaults,  and  barrier- 
ed it  around  against  all  human  intrusion,  and  veil- 
ed it  from  human  espionage,  and  thrown  it  aloof 
from  all  outward  collision,  amidst  the  invisibilities 
of  His  own  eternity — that  He  who  throneth  amidst 
those  invisibilities,  might  there  erect  His  awful 
throne,  and  there  reveal  His  presence,  and  stretch 
over  it  the  sceptre  of  His  power,  and  utter  his  high 
commands,  and  make  it  a  sanctuary  for  himself — 
and  man,  in  the  sacredness  of  that  secure  retreat, 
might  be  alone  with  God,  where  no  human  power 
could  rush  in  between  the  soul  and  its  Creator. 
This  sanctuary  i3  the  human  bosom;  and  secure 
amidst  its  impenetrable  secrecies,  the  soul  of  man 
hath  bid  defiance  to  every  other  form  of  tyranny; 
hath  smiled  at  the  dungeon  and  the  chains;  hath 
exulted  on  the  gibbet  and  at  the  stake;  "seen  death 
in  all  its  forms,  and  scorned  them  all" — nay,  the 
very  dungeon,  where  the  imprisoned  patriot  or 
Christian,  hath  been  pinioned  down  with  heavy 
chains  to  the  cold,  hard  floor,  has  been  converted 
into  a  temple  for  God's  worship — and  the  flames, 
which  consumed  the  martyr's  body,  have  been  a 


.     PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  21 

chariot  of  fire  to  his  ascending  spirit,  as  he  mount- 
ed aloft  h  rapture  to  the  bosom  of  his  God.  But 
here  is  a  dark  and  mysterious  power,  which  enters 
this  God-ordained  and  God-consecrated  sanctuary, 
and  profanes  its  sanctity — storms  this  last  strong 
hold  of  human  freedom — dashes  down  its  battle- 
ments, drags  forth  its  awful  secrets  at  the  Confes- 
sional, and  throws  over  the  immortal  soul  itself,  its 
paralyzing  and  degrading  fetters.  Even  the  south- 
ern slave  may  be  a  freeman.  You  may  brand  his 
brow,  but  it  is  only  skin  deep — no  deeper  than  his 
color,  and  cannot  touch  the  soul.  The  chains  that 
bind  his  brawny  limbs,  may  leave  the  mind  unfet- 
tered; and  amidst  all  outward  bondage,  he  may  be 
the  freeman,  whom  "Christ  makes  free"— but  here 
is  a  tyranny,  whose  brand  burns  deep  into  the  in- 
most soul;  whose  fetters  bind  the  free  thoughts  as 
they  rise,  and  reaching  all  the  faculties,  degrade 
and  paralvze  the  whole.  For  the  mind  of  man  is 
a  unit.  You  cannot  degrade  it  in  one  respect  and 
retain  its  dignity  in  another.  The  man  who  will 
crouch  before  a  priest,  will  quail  before  a  tyrant — 
and  he  who  has  surrendered  his  mental  indepen- 
dence at  the  bidding  of  another,  and  wears  the  fet- 
ters on  his  soul — he  who  hath  bowed  down  beneath 
the  yoke  of  such  a  bondage,  hath  stooped  to  the 
depth  of  such  ineffable  degradation,  has  nothing 
left  to  lose,  and  is  a  fit  instrument  of  the  same  fear- 
ful power  to  fasten  the  same  ignominious  fetters 
upon  others. 

But  there  are  relations  of  far  wider  compass- 
far  deeper  significance,  far  loftier,  holier,  more  so- 
lemn and  more  sacred  interest,  than  all  that  can  be 


22  THE    RIGHT  OF 

comprehended  in  the  enumeration  of  political  rights 
—relations  that  link  us  with  the  great  universe  of 
moral  beings,  and  reader  us  intelligent  and  accoun- 
table subjects  of  God's  mora!  government,  and  by 
that  unchanging  and  terrible  connection  which  God 
hath  established  of  all  with  all,  the  blow  which  is 
aimed  at  the  rights  of  thought,  strikes  deeper — to 
the  very  springs  of  moral  agency,  and  severs  the 
bonds  of  all  human  obligation.  For  duty  and 
right  are  correlative  terms,  and  there  can  be  no 
duty,  without  a  correspondent  right;  (for  surely  1 
have  a  right  to  perform  my  duty.)  But  the  right 
to  perform  a  duty,  involves  by  unavoidable  conse- 
quence, all  that  13  necessary  to  its  intelligent  and 
appropriate  performance,  the  employment  of  all  the 
means  and  the  exercise  of  all  the  powers  requisite 
to  ascertain  our  duty — the  knowledge  of  the  rela- 
tions, on  which  it  is  based;  the  scrutiny  of  the  evi- 
dence by  which  it  is  sustained;  of  the  authority  by 
which  it  is  enjoined;  the  motives,  by  which  it  is 
urged;  the  exercise,  in  fine,  of  all  our  rational  pow- 
ers, in  their  fullest  meaning  and  largest  scope;  from 
the  minutest  induction  of  particular  facts  to  the 
widest  sweep  of  a  lofty  and  comprehensive  gene- 
ralization. Now  duty — moral  obligation— is  in 
tensely  individual — personal,  presses  directly  on 
the  conscience — lies  between  man  and  his  God. 
It  is  mine,  and  cannot  be  transferred  to  another. 
No  man  can  love  God  or  his  fellow  man  by  proxy. 
But  this  moral  obligation  is  itself  the  compound  re- 
sult of  the  relations  we  bear,  and  the  faculties  we 
possess  adapted  to  those  relations.  Duty  is  ours 
only,  because  the  relations  and  capabilities  from 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  23 

which  it  springs,  are  ours.  Annihilate  these  rela- 
tions, and  obligation  ceases:  destroy  these  powers 
or  suspend  their  exercise,  and  obligation  is  equally 
at  an  end.  Transfer  to  another  the  exercise  of 
these  powers  on  my  behalf,  and  you  transfer  .along 
wiih  them  all  the  resulting  obligations.  In  assum- 
ing to  himself,  the  exercise  for  me  of  those  ration- 
al powers,  from  which  my  moral  obligation  arises, 
he  deliberately  assumes  my  responsibilities  and  du- 
ties, and  as  far  as  his  power  extends,  strips  me  at 
once  of  the  digniiy  and  responsibilities  of  a  moral 
agent.  Hence  it  is  not  by  fortuitous  connection, 
but  by  necessary  sequence,  that  the  power  which 
claims  to  dictate  our  faith,  claims  likewise  to  par- 
don sin — that  she,  who  suspends  the  exercise  of 
Private  Judgment,  suspends  likewise  the  exercise 
of  individual  conscience,  and  assumes  to  abrogate 
the  most  solemn  obligations,  even  though  confirm- 
ed by  the  awful  sanctity  of  an  oath.  Hence  that 
horrible  union  of  devotion  and  crime;  of  piety  and 
blood,  so  common  in  papal  lands.  Hence  the  Span- 
ish assassin  consecrates  himself  by  attendance  on 
high  mass,  for  his  deeds  of  blood.  The  Italian 
robber  wears  near  his  heart,  the  image  of  the  Vir- 
gin. The  courtezan  of  Naples  worships  with  de- 
vout affection,  her  patron  saint.  For  salvation, 
without  the  necessity  of  personal  holiness,  is  a  ne- 
cessary counterpart  to  faith  without  the  trouble  of 
personal  inquiry.  Thus  the  subjugation  of  the 
intellect  leads  directly  to  the  extinction  of  con- 
sciencp.  Stupendous  ab=urdi'ies  nwural'y  beget 
stupendous  crimes:  and  the  darkest  secrets  of  the 
Confessional  are  but  the  necessary  result  of  those 


24  THE    RIGHT   OF 

portentous  dogmas,  which  first  challenge  our  be- 
lief and  then  decline  our  scrutiny — first  revolt  our 
reason  and  then  denounce  our  reason  because  it 
has  been  revolted — for  the  poison  which  hath  pal- 
sied the  brain,  deadens  the  heart  and  stupifies  the 
conscience;  and  the  light  of  reason  and  of  the  mo- 
ral sense  are  extinguished  together. 

Again,  this  right  of  Private  Judgment,  which  is 
thus  implied,  and  exercised  in  every  act  of  reason- 
ing, which  is  interwoven  with  the  whole  structure 
of  onr  minds — which  is  the  earliest  and  dearest  of 
human  rights,  and  the  basis  of  all  the  rest,  and  in- 
dispensable to  the  existence  of  a  moral  agent — -is 
distinctly  recognized  in  that  great  charter  of  hu- 
man equality  and  human  rights,  the  Bible — is  en- 
joined again  and  again,  both  by  precept  and  ex- 
ample— nay,  like  the  existence  of  God  himself,  is 
presupposed,  as  an  admitted  and  necessary  truth, 
upon  every  page  of  the  sacred  record.  Peter,  you 
know,  according  to  the  teaching  of  our  adversa- 
ries, was  the  first  Pope  of  Rome.  Now,  since  the 
days  of  Peter,  there  have  been  many  Popes  of  ex- 
ceedingly various  characters.  Some  of  them,  per- 
haps, pious  and  worthy  men;  others,  by  universal 
admission,  prodigies  of  crime — monsters  in  human 
shape— impure,  licentious,  beastly,  treacherous, 
steeped  in  sensuality  and  blood.  Each  of  these 
Popes  likewise  in  his  day  has  issued  his  Bull  or  cir- 
cular letters,  for  the  instruction  and  warning  of  the 
faithful — from  the  first  epistle  general  of  Peter  to 
the  last  encyclical  letter  of  Pope  Gregory  xvi.  be- 
neath whose  happy  reign,  we  heretics  are  permit- 
ted as  yet  to  breathe.     These  letters  too  are  all 


PfilVATB    JUDGMENT.  25 

written  in  a  dead  language,  and  need  to  be  transla- 
ted into  the  vulgar  tongue.     Now  is  it  not  a  sin- 
gular fact,  that  all  the  letters  of  all  the  Popes,  from 
the  beginning  to  the  present  time — even  the  vilest 
of  the  vile,  who  have  desolated  nations  by  their  am- 
bition, and  disgraced  our  nature  by  their  crimes- 
all  may  be  read  by  the  people  in  their  own  mother 
tongue,  until  you  come  back  to  that  great  Apostle, 
who  alone  among  them  all  wrote  by  divine  inspira- 
tion— and  from  whom  all  derive  their  apostolic  dig- 
nity and  power?     Is  it  not  a  curious  circumstance 
that  Protestants  alone  cherish  with  affection,  and 
love  to  read  the  encyclical  letters  of  Pope  Peter, 
and  are  publishing  them  abroad  by  millions  for  the 
instruction  of  the  world ?     But  why  are  all  men  pei- 
mitted  thus  to  read  the  letters  of  the  Popes?  The 
question  lies  upon  the  surface— but  the  answer  cuts 
deep  into  the  vitals,  and  lays  bare  to  the  common- 
est observer,  the  very  heart  of  this  great  contro- 
versy. Because  they  were  written  for  the  very  pur- 
pose  that  they  might  be  read — written  for  the  in- 
struction and  warning  of  God's  people— addressed 
to    the   faithful    throughout   the  world;  and  even 
monkish  stupidity  has  never  yet  ascended  that  pin- 
nacle of  folly  as  to  propose  that  one  should  gravely 
write  a  letter  for  the  benefit  of  mankind,  send  it 
abroad  thioughout  the  world,  and  then  forbid  man- 
kind to  lead  it.     Now,  precisely  3uch  letters  are 
those  of  Peter  the  first  Pope  of  Rome:  the  first 
and  second  epistles  general,  or  circular  letters  of 
Peter,  addressed  not  to  the  Bishops  or  Priesthood, 
but  to  the  people,  all  the  faithful  scattered  through- 
out Pontus,  Cappadocia,  &c.     The  same  is  true  of 
c 


26  THE    RIGHT   OP 

all  the  apostolic  epistles  to  the  different  churches, 
Gallatians,  Thessalonians,  Corinthians,  &c.  They 
are  addressed  not  to  the  Bishops,  but  to  the  people 
— and  written  in  the  language  of  the  people,  to 
whom  they  were  addressed.  St.  Paul's  epistle  to 
the  Romans  too,  was  it  not  addressed  to  the  whole 
church  in  Rome,  to  be  read  by  every  individual,  in 
a  language  understood  by  every  one  who  could  read 
at  all?  Is  it  not  a  strange  procedure  then,  that  the 
very  epistle  which  St.  Paul  wrote  by  divine  inspi- 
ration for  the  benefit  of  the  church  at  Rome,  this 
Roman  church  is  not  permitted  to  read  at  all?  Sure- 
ly it  is  worse  than  folly  to  write  me  a  letter  which 
it  is  a  sin  for  me  to  read.  Is  it  not  passing  strange 
that  the  church  of  Rome  is  the  only  church  on  earth 
whose  members  dare  not  read  the  epistle  to  the 
Romans,  and  the  church  which  is  fojunded  on  St. 
Peter,  the  only  one  which  forbids  the  letters  of  St. 
Peter? 

The  Bible  is  and  has  ever  been  emphatically  the 
book  of  the  people ;  designed  for  the  people — ad- 
dressed originally  to  the  people,  and  adapted  pre- 
eminently for  their  instruction.  We  have  seen 
that  this  is  true  of  the  Epistles.  It  is  manifest 
with  equal  evidence  concerning  every  other  por- 
tion of  the  Bible.  The  laws  of  Moses  for  instance 
(with  a  few  exceptions)  were  designed  to  regulate 
the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  relations,  and  moral  du- 
ties of  the  people ;  were  addressed  to  them  as  a 
nation,  in  their  own  language  ;  were  read  consecu- 
tively at  the  Synagogues,  in  the  people's  tongue; 
and  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  sacred  his 
tory  and  sacred  jurisprudence,  was  enjoined  on 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  27 

every  Israelite,  as  his  most  incumbent  duty.  When 
the  Prophets  warned  the  people  of  God's  coming 
wrath  ;  rebuked  them  for  their  sin,  or  cheered  them 
with  the  hope  of  "the  glory  hereafter  to  be  reveal, 
ed  ; "  was  it  not  in  the  people's  language,  in  the 
people's  ears,  and  to  the  people's  understandings, 
that  their  inspired  warnings  and  exhortations  were 
addressed?  And  he,  the  last  and  greatest  of  all 
the  Prophets,  who  closed  in  his  own  person,  with 
stern  and  lofty  dignity,  that  illustrious  line  of  God- 
inspired  instructors;  the  strange  and  gif.ed  man 
that  issued  from  the  Wilderness  of  Judea,  with  his 
raiment  of  Camel's  hair  and  leathern  girdle,  and 
with  all,  a  Prophet's  zeal  and  energy,  denounced 
the  corruptions  of  his  day  ;  was  it  not  to  the  peo- 
ple that  he  came?  Did  not  all  Jerusalem,  and 
Judea/ and  all  the  region  round  about  Jordan, 
gather  to  his  ministry;  and  when  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  the  teachers  of  the  law  anoVkeepers  of 
the  consciences  of  the  people,  came — how  did  he 
salute  them?  "Oh,  generation  of  vipers,  who  hath 
warned  you  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come?"  The 
Miracles,  the  Parables,  the  Sermons — the  divine  in- 
structions of  our  Saviour — were  they  not  addressed 
directly  to  the  people,  in  their  own  presence,  and 
in  their  mother  tongue?  And  when  that  Man  of 
Sorrows  once  rejoiced,  and  poured  forth  his  over- 
flowing joy  in  language  of  gratitude  to  God,  was 
not  this  the  source  of  his  grateful  exultation,  that 
the  humblest  of  all  his  children  could  comprehend 
and  enjoy  the  loftiest  Revelations  of  his  Love — 
"I  thank  thee,  Oh  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and 
earth,  because  thou  hast  hid  these  things  from  the 


28  THE   RIGHT  OP 

wise  and  prudent,  and  revealed  them  unto  babes!" 
Few  of  his  words  were  addressed  to  the  Priest- 
hood of  his  day,  and  these  were  daggers.  "Oh, 
generation  of  vipers,"  "Blind  leaders  of  the  blind," 
"Ye  are  of  your  father  the  devil,"  "Ye  hypocrites! 
well  did  Isaiah  prophesy  of  you,"  "Teaching  for 
doctrines  the  commandments  of  men." 

Suppose  now  that  one  of  those  devoted  lovers  of 
the  Saviour,  who  had  hung  with  wrapt  attention  on 
his  lips — at  the  Sea  of  Galilee,  or  upon  Mount  Ol- 
ivet— till  each  word  of  wisdom,  as  it  fell  burning 
on  his  heart,  was  engraven  indelibly  upon  his  mem- 
ory, had  been  told  that  it  was  criminal  to  remember 
what  it  had  been  a  duty  and  a  blessedness  to  hear; 
and  hearing,  to  love;  and  loving,  it  was  impossible 
to  forget?  What  would  be  his  wonder?  But  sup- 
pose that  he  had  transferred  to  paper,  for  the  in- 
struction of  his  children  or  his  friends,  the  record 
of  those  glorious  truths,  whose  living  impression 
still  glowed  and  beamed  in  joy  upon  his  own  bo- 
som, would  it  not  be  absurd  to  say  that  it  was 
criminal  for  them  to  read  with  the  eye  of  the  body; 
what  it  was  right  for  him  to  contemplate  with  the 
eye  of  the  understanding  and  by  the  light  of  mem- 
ory? But  behold  we  have  the  same  instructions 
recorded  by  the  pen  of  inspiration,  and  their  per- 
fect accuracy  vouched  by  the  infallibility  of  God 
himself;  and  does  not  that  doctrine  sink  even  be- 
neath the  dignity  of  contempt,  which  gravely 
teaches,  that  the  very  instructions  which  it  was 
right  for  him  to  hear;  and  hearing,  to  love;  and 
loving,  to  remember;  and  remembering, to  record; 
it  is  criminal  for  us  to  read,  when  recorded  by 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  29 

Infinite  Wisdom  and  vouched  by  Infinite  Veracity. 
But  we  said  the  Bible  is  adapted  to  the  Peo- 
pae,  as  well  as  designed  for  them,  and  we  are 
bold  to  assert,  that  apart  altogether  from  any  ques- 
tion as  to  its  inspiration,  there  is  not  in  the  whole 
circle  of  ancient  or  modern  literature,  a  single  work 
which  can  for  a  moment  be  compared  with  it,  as  a 
manual  of  popular  instruction,  as  a  book  for  the  peo- 
ple, adapted  alike  to  every  period  of  life,  and  every 
condition  of  human  society.  Its  simple  narrative, 
its  lofty  poetry,  its  instructive  history,  its  pathetic 
eloquence,  its  ingenious  parables,  its  touching 
portraitures  of  nature  and  of  human  character,  its 
pure  morality,  its  exalted  and  spiritual  religion, 
its  majestic  doctrines,  so  simple  in  their  majesty, 
that  like  their  divine  and  glorious  author,  who  fill- 
eth  immensity  with  his  presence,  and  the  heaven 
of  heaven's  cannot  contain  him,  yet  condescendeth 
to  dwell  in  the  bosom  of  the  humble  and  contrite 
one,  even  so  these  wonderful  revelations,  though 
touching  the  loftiest  themes,  though  comprehend- 
ing all  time  and  all  eternity  in  their  immense  sur- 
vey, though  fitted  to  expand  an  archangel's  bosom, 
and  employ  a  seraph's  tongue  of  fire,  may  hover 
in  softened  radiance  around  the  head,  and  gently 
nestle  with  soothing  tenderness  in  the  heart  of  in- 
fancy itself!  Who  of  us  has  not  wept  at  the  story 
of  Joseph;  who  has  not  been  elevated  by  the  gran- 
duer  of  Isaiah;  who  has  not  melted  at  the  tender- 
ness of  David;  and  where  is  the  heart  so  cold  that 
it  has  never  "burned  within  him  as  he  talked  with 
Jesus  in  the  Evangelists?"  The  Bible!  Why  I 
have  read  it  from  my  earliest  childhood,  and  never 
c2 


.'Ill  THE    RIGHT   OP 

found  that  it  had  taught  me  one  false  principle  of 
action,  one  single  error  in  doctrine,  or  in  morals. 
The  Bible!  I  learned  to  read  it  on  my  mother's 
knee.     It  was  bathed  with  my  father's  tears,  and 
consecrated  with  a  double  sacredness,  by  his  dying 
prayers;  and  when  that  sainted  mother  was  just 
ready  to  depart,  it  lay  upon  her  dying  pillow,  and 
cheered  her  dying  hour,  a3  she  charged  me  to  love 
the  Bible  we  had  read  so  ofien,  and  so  fondly  to- 
gether.    Go,  then,  thou  dark  Inquisitor!  if  go  thou 
must,  strike  from  my   little  library — the  meagre 
collections  of  my  youth — each  noble  and  each  hon- 
ored name — Bacon,  who  enlarged  the  boundaries 
of  human    thought;    Locke,    who   fathomed    the 
mysteries   of   the    human    spirit ;    Galileo,    who 
taught   the  motions   of  the  Universe ;    and    Mil- 
ton,  Patriot,    Philosopher,   Poet,   Sage,   with  his 
glorious  treatise  on  the  rights  of  conscience  and 
freedom  of  the   Press;  draw  across  them  all,  yes, 
all,  the  dark  mark  of  Papal  Censorship,  but  spare, 
O,  spare  my  Bible!     What  should  I  do  without 
my  Bible?     It  was  the  instructor  of  my  infancy, 
the  guide  of  my  youth,  the  companion  and  friend 
of  my  manhood,  and  shall  it  not  be  the  solace  of  my 
declining  age?     And  that  poor  Orphan  Boy,  who 
wanders   homeless  and  latherless  in  your  streets, 
why  rob  him  of  his  Bible?     I  never  knew  a  boy 
that  loved   his  Bible,  who  was  not  the  better  for 
it ;    who  did  not  grow    up  to  be  a  more  upright 
man — a  worthier  citizen — a  bolder  freeman.     Be- 
sides, is  it  not  his  birth-right? — the  last  possession 
which  orphanage  and  poverty  have  left  him.     Did 
not  his  father  or  forefathers,  as  well  as  vours  and 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  3] 

mine,  light  this  same  battle  in  the  groat  revolu- 
tionary struggle?  Was  it  not  for  this  above  all 
other  rights,  for  freedom  of  conscience,  and  liberty 
to  read  the  Bible,  that  those  venerable  patriots 
shed  their  heart's  blood  of  old  1  Was  not  this  the 
very  height  and  front  of  their  indignant  denuncia- 
tion of  British  Tyranny,  when  on  the  21st  of  Oc- 
tober, 1774,  in  Congress  assembled,  in  an  address 
to  the  English  nation,  they  charged  on  that  Gov- 
ernment the  design  to  extend  the  "dominion  of 
Canada,  that  their  numbers,  daily  swelling  with 
Catholic  emigrants  from  Europe,  may  reduce  this 
ancient,  free,  Protestant  Colony,  to  a  state  of 
slavery,  and  to  establish,  in  this  country,  a  religion 
which  has  deluged  your  Island  in  blood,  and  dis- 
persed impiety,  bigotry,  persecution,  murder,  and 
rebellion  throughout  every  part  of  the  world  ?  " 
But  why  rob  him  of  his  Bible?  Because  the  Popes 
and  Cardinals  of  a  foreign  land,  lodged  in  the 
palace  of  the  Caesars,  and  "arrayed  in  purple  and 
Sne  linen,"  have  issued  their  imperial  decree,  for- 
bidding the  Bible  to  their  vassals?  Because  the 
thousands  of  their  "Bonds-men  born,"  drifted  on 
the  tide  of  foreign  immigration,  have  left  their 
country,  but  retained  their  principles,  and  dare 
not,  even  here,  exercise  the  rights  our  fathers  pur- 
chased for  their  children,  and  which  we  so  freely, 
yet  so  vainly,  proffer  to  them?  And  has  it  come 
to  this  already?  That  the  large,  fred  mind  of  this 
great  nation  can  be  contented  within  the  narrow 
limits  which  priestly  fanaticism,  or  despotic  power, 
have  prescribed  to  their  most  abject  menials — the 
Catechism  of  the  Diocese,  "A  Book  of  Arithmetic, ' 


32  THE    BIGHT    OF 

"A  Book  of  Moral  Lessons" — replete  with  Monkish 
fables.  Shall  Italy  be  transported  to  these  United 
States?  Shall  the  same  dark  and  bbody  flag,  which, 
more  than  three  hundred  years  ago,  was  hung  out 
from  the  Battlements  of  the  Inquisition,  and  ever 
since  has  waved  its  gloomy  folds  in  triumph  over 
despotic  Austria, down-trodden  Italy,  benighted  Por- 
tugal and  Spain,  and  semi-barbarous  South  Amer- 
ica, blackening  the  earth  with  its  shadow,  and 
shutting  out  the  blessed  light  of  heaven,  be  planted 
here,  upon  the  graves  of  our  dead  fathers?  Why, 
their  very  bones  might  well  rattle  in  their  coffins, 
at  such  a  profanation!  The  marble  statues  of  our 
immortalized  heroes  might,  without  a  Popish  mira- 
cle, speak  out  from  their  stone  bosoms,  and  even 
weep  tears  of  blood,  over  their  degenerate  offspring. 
Oh,  no,  it  cannot  be!  The  Bible,  depend  upon 
it,  lies  near  to  the  throbbing  heart  of  this  great 
nation.  It  is  a  sacred,  tender  place.  Touch  it 
not;  I  beseech,  I  entreat,  I  warn  you,  touch  it  not 
too  roughly.  The  Bible  is  the  basis  of  all  our 
institutions;  to  banish  it  would  be  a  revolution,  not 
begun,  but  consummated;  a  revolution  in  the  vital 
principles  of  our  Government  and  our  society. 
The  very  revolution  predicted  on  the  21st  of  Octo- 
ber, 1774,  and  by  the  very  instrumentality  which 
the  gifted  seers  of  that  day  foresaw  in  the  distance, 
and  with  such  prophetic  sagacity  announced.  Then 
leave  us  our  Bible;  take  what  you  will  beside;  if 
only  the  Bible  be  left,  the  nation  may  be  free  and 
happy  still.  Let  foreign  despotism  pour  in,  by 
tens  of  thousands,  upon  our  shores,  and  lead  up  in 
dense  columns  to  our  polls,  her  marshalled  myrmi- 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  33 

dons,  her  masses  of  vice  and  putrefaction,  spared 
from  the  gallows,  or  vomited  forth  from  the  darkest,, 
foulest  alleys  of  her  crowded  and  pestilential  cities. 
Let  some  supple  demagague,  borne  into  the  highest 
office  of  our  Government,  upon  the  shoulders  of  a 
foreign  Priesthood,  guided  by  Italian  chicanery, 
and  paid  with  Austrian  money  from  the  Leopold 
foundation,  worship  the  power  that  gave  him  polit- 
cal  pre-eminence;  let  Jesuitical  skill,  in  the  heat  of 
party  collision,  succeed,  for  a  season,  in  arraying 
our  free  citizens,  one  against  another;  nay,  let  the 
fair  fabric  of  this  Government  be  overthrown,  and 
our  free  Constitution  be  scattered  to  the  winds:  yet 
with  an  open  Bible,  and  a  Free  Press,  we  will  go 
forth  amidst  that  benighted  and  corrupted  popula- 
tion, and,  by  God's  blessing,  from  the  very  ruins  of 
Liberty  and  Virtue,  will  ereet,  once  more,  the  no- 
ble edifice  of  our  civil  and  religious  institutions. 

But  again:  The  opposite  principle  leads  necessa- 
rily to  persecution.  There  can  be  no  wrong  with- 
out a  correspondent  right;  nor  can  omnipotence 
itself  guided  by  infinite  wisdom,  and  urged  on  by 
boundless  desire,  devise  any  method  by  which  it 
could  violate  a  right,  where  there  is  no  right  exist- 
ing to  be  violated.  Hence,  if  I  have  not  the  right 
of  Private  Judgment,  the  absolute  and  unlimited 
right  to  reason,  investigate  and  determine  for  my- 
self, he  who  denies  me  the  possession  of  this  right 
and  prohibits  its  exercise,  does  me  no  wrong;  nay, 
if  I  have  challenged  for  myself  rights  which  are 
really  another's,  if  I  have  assumed  for  my  individ- 
ual behoof,  prerogatives  which  appropriately  belong 
to  the  church  for  the  common  good,  then  am  I  an 


34 


THE     RIGHT  OF 


usurper;  and  if  the  exercise  of  this  assumed  right  is 
injurious  at  once  to  myself  and  to  others,  then  upon 
every  principle  of  moral  and  social  obligation;  in 
every  view  of  the  most  enlarged  and  comprehen- 
sive philanthropy,  the  church  and  the  state  are  not 
only  authorized,  but  imperatively  bound,  at  all  ha- 
zards to  the  individual,  and  by  all  necessary  penal- 
ties, to  resist  the  usurpation,  and  to  extirpate,  if 
need  be,  the  offender  and  the  offence.  Hence  we 
can  explain  that  otherwise  strange  and  incredible 
contradiction,  which  meets  us  so  often  in  the  his- 
tory of  persecution,  when  the  really  amiable  inqui- 
sitor weeps,  as  he  hands  over  his  victim  to  the  gib- 
bet or  the  rack;  and  our  holy  mother  sometimes 
mingles  tears  with  her  curses  upon  her  rebellious 
children.  Persecution  is  with  them  a  religious  du- 
ty, and  lies  upon  the  conscience.  Others  may  per- 
secute from  passion,  she  must  from  principle. 

Hence  too,  that  parallel  phenomenon,  that  when- 
ever through  all  time,  an  individual  or  a  sect  be- 
comes tinctured,  however  slightly,  with  this  por- 
tentous doctrine;  from  that  very  moment,  and  in 
that  precise  degree,  begins  the  cry  for  blood.  Thus 
the  British  Critic,  the  accredited  organ  of  that  non- 
descript sect,  which  originated  recently  in  England 
and  rejoices  in  the  name  of  Dr.  Pusey,  that  infini- 
tesimal sub-division  of  the  church,  that  fragment 
of  a  fragment  of  a  fragment,  whose  ecclesiastical 
arithmetic,  with  such  graceful  modesty,  proves  it 
to  be  the  whole  church  of  Christ  upon  earth,  that 
broad  burlesque  upon  the  page  of  history,  that  most 
ridiculous  of  all  abortions  from  the  womb  of  time, 
which  has  its  head  in  England,  its  center  of  unity 


PRIVATE     JUDGMENT.  35 

ai  Rome,  while  its  cloven  feet  are  here,  and  as  for 
the  brains  thereof,  no  human  anatomy  hath  discov- 
ered their  place  as  yet;  that  farce  of  farces,  amidst 
the  great  world-epic  and  tragedy  around  us;  that 
modern  antique  and  mediaeval  nineteenth  century; 
with  all  the  puerility  of  Rome,  yet  without  her  oc- 
casional grandeur,  with  more  than  all  her  audicity 
and  insolence,  yet  without  her  courage  or  her  pow- 
er; the  British  critic,  edited  by  the  brother-in-law 
of  Dr.  Newman,  the  accredited  organ  of  this  most 
ludicrous  of  all  the  sect?  past,  present  or  to  come, 
and  of  all  the  successors  of  all  the  apostles,  whose 
beatific  presence  blesses  this  happy  land  of  ours — 
tells  us  as  quietly  now,  and  with  as  much  relish  too, 
as  a  tame  tiger  would  lick  the  blood  from  off  his 
paws,  that  he  acknowledges  a  certain  pleasure  in 
the  thought  that  innovators  in  religion  (by  which 
he  means  all  who  differ  from  himself)  shall  have  to 
suffer  for  their  opinions. 

And  now,  had  we  no  practical  application  of  this 
principle,  in  the  affairs  of  the  world;  no  authorita- 
tive exposition  of  its  deep  and  ominous  significance; 
no  bold  avowal  of  its  ultimate  results,  even  in  their 
most  revolting  form,  by  its  ablest  and  most  distin- 
guished advocates;  still  our  argument  wonld  be 
conclusive,  and  it  were  absurd  to  exclaim,  "Where 
is  the  decree  of  a  General  Council  or  acknowledged 
Bull  of  a  Pope,  which  teaches  persecution  as  a  doc- 
trine of  the  Church]"  for  we  have  proven, that  it  is 
a  necessary  result  from  this  admitted  and  funda- 
mental doctrine;  and  surely  we  do  not  need  a  Bull 
of  the  Pope,  or  decree  of  a  General  Council,  to 
enable  us  to  see  the   connexion  between  the  pre- 


36  THE    RIGHT  OF 

mises  and  the  conclusion,  in  an  argument — and 
even  the  strictest  Churchman  hath  never  yet  con- 
tended, that  the  Holy  Fathers,  however  infallible 
in  faith,  were  infallible  in  logic.  But,  fortunately 
for  our  argument,  though  unfoitunately  for  the 
welfare  of  the  race,  the  conclusions  we  have  drawn 
from  this  principle  are  established  as  legitimate  re- 
sults, by  the  authorized  interpretation  ot  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church,  through  all  her  organs;  by  the 
open  avowal  of  her  most  distinguished  writers;  the 
public  acts  of  her  accredited  agents;  again  and 
again  by  the  Bulls  of  Popes  and  the  decrees  of 
General  Councils.  Passing  by  all  more  ancient 
authorities,  I  shall  direct  your  attention  only  to  two 
works  of  modern  times,  published,  circulated,  nnd 
read  by  the  authority,  and  with  the  sanction  of  the 
most  enlightened  and  liberal  Prelates  in  Ireland,  in 
the  present  century;  one  a  Commentary  on  the  New 
Testament,  the  other  a  standard  author  in  Theology. 
The  work  which  I  hold  in  my  hand  is  entitled, 
"The  Moral  and  Dogmatic  Theology  of  the  Rev. 
and  Most  Learned  Lord  Peter  Dens."  "Printed  at 
Dublin,  by  Richard  Coyne,  Chapel  street,  Printer, 
and  Bookseller  to  the  Roman  Catholic  College, 
Ma'ynooth.  The  second  edition,  dedicated  to  the 
Most  Rev.  Lord  and  Father  in  God,  Daniel 
Murray,  Archbishop  of  Dublin  and  Primate,  of 
Iieland,  and  printed  with  his  approbation."  We 
pass  bye,  for  the  present,  its  ineffable  pollution,  its 
unfathomable  depths  of  unimaginable  filth.  I  do 
declare,  that  there  are  described  in  this  book,  pur- 
sued into  the  most  loathsome  details,  dwelt  upon 
with  the  most  disgusting  minuteness,  forms,  and 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  37 

modes,  and  degrees  of  crime,  which  I  had  never 
heard  of,  or  conceived  before,  and  which,  I  verily 
believe,  have  no  existence,  except  in  the  polluted 
imaginations  which  gloat  over  them,  with  such 
peculiar  fondness,  or  in  the  deepest  and  darkest 
hells  of  the  over-crowded  population  of  European 
cities.  And  I  orTer  publicly  to  any  respectable 
married  gentleman  of  middle  age,  Protestant  or 
Catholic,  who  is  able  to  read  the  Latin  language, 
or  who  can  bring  a  competent  interpreter,  that  I 
will  show  him  passages  in  this  system  of  Moral 
Theology,  so  unapproachably,  immeasurably,  in- 
expressibly obscene,  that  he  cannot  read  them, 
even  in  a  foreign  language,  and  in  the  presence  of 
a  male  acquaintance,  without  a  blush  for  the  honor 
of  his  race;  and  his  very  eyes  will  turn  away  with 
intolerable  nausea  and  disgust  from  the  unfinished 
page.  And  if  he  shall  think  that  my  description 
has  surpassed,  or  even  equalled,  or  that  any  human 
description  could  more  than  indefinitely  approxi- 
mate the  revolting  and  loathsome  reality,  then  I 
am  willing  to  be  publicly  denounced  through  life, 
as  a  maniac  or  a  slanderer.  This  in  passing.  But 
I  must  hasten  to  the  passages  directly  bearing  on 
my  subject.  The  first  passage  which  I  shall  quote 
gives  his  views  on  the  subject  of  toleration,  and 
may  be  found  on  the  83d  page,  vol.  2d.  Under 
the  question,  whether  the  rites  of  Infidels  are  to  be 
tolerated,  after  disposing  of  the  Jews,  his  second 
answer  is  in  the  following  words:  "The  rites  of 
other  Infidels,  such  as  Pagans  and  Heretics,  are 
not  in  themselves  to  be  tolerated,  because  they  are 


38  THE   RIGHT  OF 

so  evil,  that  no  truth,  nor  advantage  to  the  Church? 
can  be  derived  therefrom." 

On  the  289  page  (same  vol.)  is  found  the  follow- 
ing language:  "Heretics,  schismatics,  apostates  and 
all  other  like  baptized  persons,  are  bound  by  the 
laws  of  the  church,  because  by  their  baptism,  they 
are  made  subjects  of  the  church;  nor  are  they  re- 
leased from  her  laws  more  than  the  rebel  subjects 
of  a  lawful  prince,  are  released  from  the  laws  of 
that  prince."  Upon  the  88th  and  89th  pages  of  the 
same  volume,  we  find  a  chapter,  with  the  following 
title:  "Concerning  the  Punishments  of  the  Crime 
of  Heresy."  In  answer  to  the  question  what  are 
the  punishments  of  the  crime  of  Heresy,  he  re- 
plies, "Notorious  heretics  are  infamous  for  this 
very  cause  itself,  and  are  deprived  of  Christian 
burial."  "Their  temporal  goods  are  for  this  very 
cause  itself  confiscated."  "Finally  they  are  also 
justly  afflicted  with  other  corporeal  punishments, 
as  exile,  imprisonment,"  &c.  But  the  question  is 
put,  "Are  Heretics  justly  punished  with  death?" 
This,  one  might  well  suppose  would  bring  his  or- 
thodoxy at  least  to  a  momentary  pause.  But  no! 
Mother  church  is  familial  with  blood.  He  marches 
directly  up,  and  boldly  grapples  with  the  question, 
in  all  its  naked  horrors,  and  proves  that  heretics 
should  be  put  death  from  the  testimony  of  St.  Tho- 
mas, the  authority  of  the  Bible,  and  the  decision 
of  the  Council  of  Constance.  "St.  Thomas  an- 
swers affirmatively,  (that  is,  that  Heretics  should 
be  put  to  death)  because  falsifiers  of  the  coin  are 
justly  punished  with  death,  therefor?,  likewise 
Heretics  should  be  put  to  death,  who  are  falsifiers 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  39 

of  the  Faith.,  and  all  experience  being  witness, 
grieviously  disturb  the  Republic.  It  is  confirmed 
by  the  fact  that  God,  under  the  old  law,  command- 
ed false  prophets  to  be  slain;  and  Deut.  chap.  17th, 
v.l2th,  it  is  decided  that  "whosoever  shall  be  proud, 
unwilling  to  obey  the  authority  of  the  Priest,  let 
him  die."  The  same  thing  is  proven  from  the  con- 
demnation of  the  14th  Art.  of  John  Huss,  by  the 
Council  of  Constance." 

The  next  authority  from  which  I  propose  to  read 
a  few  extracts,  is  the  Rhemish  Testament,  and  you 
will  permit  me  to  introduce  it  with  a  few  prefatory 
remarks.  Concerning  Den's  Theology,  there  is  no 
dispute.  There  it  stands  before  the  world,  with 
the  Arch  Bishop's  broad  imprimatur,  written  in 
blood.  Of  this  Rhemish  Testament,  there  were 
published  in  Ireland  two  editions,  one  in  1813  and 
the  other  in  1818.  On  the  title  page  of  that  of  1813 
is  found  the  name  of  the  same  John  Coyne,  to 
whom  you  have  been  already  introduced,  as  author- 
ized publisher  for  the  Jesuit  College  at  Maynooth, 
"by  permission  of  his  Grace  Dr.  Troy,  Catholic 
Lord  Primate  of  Ireland;  and  under  the  careful  re- 
vision of  the  Rev.  A.  P.  Walsh,  Denmark,  Hill, 
Dublin,"  and  on  the  exterior  title  page,  were  the 
names  of  all  the  most  distinguished  Prelates  of 
Ireland  as  its  avowed  and  public  patron.*.  This 
work,  published  in  numbers,  was  circulated  freely 
throughout  Ireland,  until  some  copies  falling  into 
the  hands  of  English  protestants,  drew  forth  a 
severe  and  merited  exposure,  of  its  persecuting 
principles  from  the  public  press.  It  was  then,  and 
not  till  then,  in  the  year  1817,  that  Dr.  Troy  dis- 


40  THE   RIGHT  OP 

claimed  all  connection  with  the  publication,  and 
denounced  the  principles  therein  avowed.  This  dis- 
avowal, of  course,  impugned  the  character  of  Coyne 
who  publicly  exposed  the  whole  disgraceful  proce- 
dure. I  read  from  a  letter  dated  Parliament  street, 
Oct.  26th,  1817.  "On  Monday,  the  13th  instant, 
your  Grace  sent  me  a  message,  by  your  servant, 
requesting  to  see  me  at  Cavendish-row,  at  the  hour 
of  two  o'clock.  I  had  scarcely  entered  your  Grace's 
apartment,  when  the  very  Rev.  Dr.  Hamill,  your 
Grace's  Vicargeneral,  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Kenney 
of  Clengours  college,  appeared.  Your  Grace  then 
produced,  and  read  a  paper,  purporting  to  be  an 
extract  from  the  "British  Critic,"  and  containing 
animadversions  on  the  notes  of  a  late  edition  of 
the  Catholic  Bible,  bearing  in  the  title-page  the  ap- 
probation of  your  Grace.  You  then  observed  that 
you  were  sure  that  I  had  no  bad  intention  in  putting 
your  Grace's  name  to  the  work;  but  that  very  bad 
consequences  had  followed — that  finding  its  way 
into  England,  it  armed  our  enemies  against  us,  and 
this  at  a  time  when  we  were  seeking  emancipa- 
tion." Upon  these  remarks,  I  asked,  "Did  not 
your  Grace  approve  and  sanction  the  publication 
of  a  Bible  by  Mr.  Macnamara,  of  Cork?"  Your 
Grace  replied,  "I  did."  I  then  asked,  "Did  not 
your  Grace  depute  the  Rev.  A.  P.  Walsh,  of  Den- 
mark streetjchapel,  to  revise,  correct  and  approve 
for  publication,  in  your  Grace's  name,  the  said 
Bible  of  Macnamara?"  Your  Grace  answered,  "I 
did."  Then  said  I,  "My  lord,  that  is  the  Bible 
now  in  your  hand."  "I  never  authorized,''  replied 
your  Grace,  "the  Rev.  Mr.  Walsh,  to  approve  a 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  41 

Bible  with  Rhemish  notes."  "Of  any  private  un- 
derstanding," said  I,  "between  your  Grace  and  Mr. 
Walsh,  I  know  nothing;  but  this  I  know,  that  Mr, 
Walsh  is  accountable  for  your  Grace's  approbation, 
which  is  now  in  the  title  page." 

Here  then  is  the  truth  at  last.  The  Bishop  au- 
thorized the  publication  of  these  notes,  not  by 
himself,  but  by  his  agent.  That  is,  you  are  arrest- 
ed for  muider,  and  protest  that  you  are  not  guilty, 
but  the  instrument  you  employed.  You  give  a 
false  Bill  of  Lading,  and  assert  it  was  not  yourself 
who  signed  it,  but  your  clerk — by  your  directions! 
Might  you  not  better  complete  the  climax  of  folly, 
by  asserting  that  it  was  neither  yourself  nor  your 
clerk,  but  the  pen  which  wrote  the  signature.  The 
motives  too  which  dictated  this  tardy  denunciation 
by  the  Archbishop,  are  sufficiently  indicated  in 
the  conversation  with  Coyne;  and  yet  more  clearly 
and  decisively  expressed  in  the  following  language, 
uttered  about  the  same  time  by  O'Connell.  Mr. 
O'Connell  remarked,  "He  had  recently  been  in 
England  himself;  and  personal  and  accurate  in- 
formation, acquired  upon  the  spot,  enabled  him  to 
state,  that  if  these  notes  were  not  denounced,  the 
Member  of  Parliament  who  should  be  hardy  enough 
to  support  Emancipation  in  the  next  session  of  Par- 
liament, would  run  a  very  considerable  risk  of  losing 
his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  approach- 
ing election."  But  the  most  instructive,  if  not  amus- 
ing, commentary  on  these  indignant  denunciations, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact,  that  at  this  very  moment, 
a  new  edition  was  passing  through  the  press,  and 
issued  under  the  same  distinguished  patronage,  in 


42  THE    RIGHT   OF 

1818,  the  following  year.  But  I  will  not  detain 
you  from  the  extracts.  "The  first  text  I  shall  read 
is  a  note  on  Matt.  13:29;  [Lest  perhaps.]  The  good 
must  tolerate  the  evil,  when  it  is  so  strong,  that  it 
cannot  be  redressed,  without  danger  and  disturb- 
ance of  the  whole  church,  and  commit  the  matter 
to  God's  judgment  in  the  latter  day;  otherwise, 
when  ill  men,  be  they  heretics,  or  other  malefac- 
tors, may  be  punished  or  suppressed  without  dis- 
turbance and  hazard  of  the  good,  they  may  and 
ought  by  public  authority,  either  temporal  or  spi- 
ritual, to  be  chastised  or  executed." 

The  next  comment  is  on  Luke  9:55.  That  is, 
the  passage  in  which,  when  our  Saviour  had  been 
refused  assistance  by  the  Samaritans,  and  James 
and  John  asked  whether  they  should  call  down  fire 
from  heaven  upon  them,  he  turned  and  said:  "Ye 
know  not  what  manner  of  spirit  ye  are  of."  And 
here  is  the  note  on  our  Lord's  rebuke,  verse  55th: 
[He  rebuked  them.]  "Not  Justice,  nor  all  rigorous 
punishment  of  sinners  is  here  forbidden,  norElias's 
act  reprehended,  nor  the  Church,  nor  Christian 
princes  blamed  for  putting  heretics  to  death,  but 
that  none  of  these  should  be  done  for  desire  of  our 
particular  revenge,  or  without  discretion,  and  re- 
gard to  their  amendment,  and  example  to  others. 
Therefore,  St.  Peter  used  his  power  upon  Ananias 
and  Sapphira,  when  he  struck  them  both  down  to 
death,  for  defrauding  the  Church." 

The  next  is  a  note  upon  Luke  14:24.  Verse 
23,  [Compel  them.]  "St.  Augustine  also  referreth 
this  compelling  to  the  penal  laws,  which  Catholic 
princes  do  justly  use  against  heretics  and  schisma- 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  43 

tics,  proving  that  they  who  are,  by  their  former 
profession  in  baptism,  subject  to  the  Catholic 
Church,  and  are  departed  from  the  same  after  sects, 
may  and  ought  to  be  compelled  into  the  unity  and 
society  of  the  Universal  Church." 

The  next  passage  to  which  I  would  call  your 
attention  is  a  note  on  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  25:11, 
in  which  St.  Paul  appeals  to  Caesar.  "If  St.  Paul, 
both  to  save  himself  from  whipping  and  from  death, 
sought  by  the  Jews,  doubted  not  to  claim  succour 
from  the  Roman  laws,  and  to  appeal  to  Caesar,  the 
prince  of  the  Romans,  not  yet  christened,  how 
much  more  may  we  call  for  aid  of  Christian  prin- 
ces and  their  laws,  for  the  punishment  of  heretics, 
and  for  the  Church's  defence  against  them." — St. 
Aug.,  50.  The  remaining  passage  is  Rev.  12:  6. 
"The  Protestants  foolishly  expound  it  of  Rome,  for 
that  they  put  heretics  to  death,  and  allow  of  their 
punishment  in  other  countries;  but  their  blood  is 
not  called  the  blood  of  saints,  no  more  than  the 
blood  of  thieves,  man-killers,  and  other  malefac- 
tors, for  the  shedding  of  which,  by  order  of  Justice, 
no  commonwealth  shall  answer."  But  why  need  I 
read  farther?  The  whole  book  is  steeped  in  gore; 
a  perfect  Alcedama;  one  broad  blood  blotch!  so 
reeking  with  bloodshed  and  murder,  that  O'Connell 
found  it  necessary  publicly  to  "denounce  its  damn- 
able doctrines,"  (the  Archbishop's  hardest  word 
for  all  this  treachery  and  slaughter,  is  "uncharita- 
ble in  sentiment,")  and  had  a  committee  appointed 
to  prepare  a  denunciation  of  those  Notes.  The 
committee  met  and  adjourned;  met  again;  promised 
to  report;  became  extinct;  dissolved;  and  nodenun- 


44  THE    RIGHT   OF 

ciation!  These  Notes  are  circulated  freely  on  the 
Continent;  and  as  late,  at  least,  as  1838,  a  new 
edition  was  published,  with  the  recommendation 
of  the  Archbishop  of  Mechlin,  assuring  the  pious 
reader  that  they  contain  nothing  contrary  to  pure 
doctrine  or  sacred  morals,  as  understood  in  the 
Catholic  Church. 

This,  then,  is  the  general,  almost  universal  in- 
terpretation of  the  great  Doctors  of  the  Church, 
and  it  does  not  in  the  slightest  degree  affect  the 
force  of  my  argument  to  reply,  that  the  Church  has 
never  authoritatively  sanctioned  those  doctrines. 
She  has  sanctioned  the  doctrine  from  which  all 
these  necessarily  flow,  according  to  the  concurrent 
testimony  of  her  ablest  writers,  and  the  practical 
interpretation  of  the  vast  majority  of  her  people. 
But  to  allow,  is,  with  her,  to  sanction.  Not  to  pro- 
hibit, is  to  adopt.  Has  she  ever  renounced  them? 
She  watches,  with  closest  scrutiny,  over  all  that 
concerns  the  doctrine,  the  morals,  the  ceremonies, 
and  the  discipline  ot  the  Church,  in  every  quarter 
of  the  globe.  With  eagle  eye  she  detects  every 
variation  from  either;  and  the  anathemas  of  Rome 
are  ever  ready  to  rebuke  them.  Yet  here  are  two 
books — only  tivo,  out  of  one  hundred  similar — 
widely  circulated  amongst  her  people,  recommend- 
ed by  her  Bishops;  nay,  written  by  ber  own  most 
orthodox  and  distinguished  sons,  (and  thus,  for  all 
practical  purposes,  bearing  the  highest  sanction  of 
the  Church);  which  openly  and  deliberately  incul- 
cate the  most  flagitious  crimes,  the  darkest  treach- 
ery, the  cruellest  massacres — as  sacred  duties  to 
God  and  to  the  Church.     Why  are  they  not  con- 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  45 

demned — suppressed?  Milton,  Bacon,  Addison, 
Locke,  Robertson,  Hallam—every  name  that  has 
thrown  a  lustre  over  English  literature — all  that  is 
loftiest  in  Poetry,  profoundest  in  Philosophy,  most 
instructive  in  History;  nay,  our  good  old  English 
Bible  itself,  has  been  marked  by  the  Inquisitors — 
loaded  with  the  anathemas  of  Rome,  and  prohibited 
as  unfit  to  be  read.  But  here  Murder  is  taught  as 
a  duty;  Persecution  is  lauded  as  a  virtue.  The 
baptized  sons  of  the  church  (sons — though  way 
ward  and  rebellious)are  to  be  butchered — nay,  have 
been  butchered — by  thousands  in  the  name  of  reli- 
gion. Yet  there  is  no  voice  of  stern  rebuke,  or  deep 
remonstrance,  or  mild  entreaty  from  our  holy  mo- 
ther. The  Doctrine  of  Butchery  circulates — the 
work  of  butchery  goes  on.  But  the  Papal  thun- 
ders slumber — the  Papal  Bull  is  dumb.  In  the 
light  then  of  the  evidence  adduced  already  this 
evening,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  charge  it  upon  Rome, 
that  all  the  blood  shed  by  this  infernal  principle, 
is  upon  her  skirts.  In  the  name  of  those  mur- 
dered millions,  I  arraign  her  to-night  before  the 
grand  inquest  of  the  nations,  and  the  bar  of  Eter- 
nal Justice,  as  guilty  in  the  first  degree — if  not  as 
principal,  yet  as  accessory — as  particeps  criminis> 
in  every  case  privy  before  the  fact — privy  after  the 
fact,  and  throughout  the  whole,  aiding  and  abetting 
by  her  counsel — shielding  by  her  power  and  re- 
warding by  her  smiles. 

But  let  us  proceed  to  the  practical  interpretation 
of  this  dogma,  in  the  history  of  the  world.  I  sjiall 
not  detain  you  with  the  horrible  details.  The  broad, 
general  facts  are^writlen  in  letters  of  blood  and  fire 


46  THE    RIGHT    OF 

upon  the  page  of  history,  and  can  never  be  erased. 
There  they  stand,  undented  and  undeniable;  nay, 
are  not  the  living  memorials  of  these  persecutions 
scattered  all  over  the  world,  as  if  Providence  had 
designed  that  the  testimony  should  be  as  universal 
as  the  crime  was  appalling;  that  every  mountain 
might  find  a  tongue,  and  every  valley  lift  up  its 
voice,  and  the  whole  creation  cry  aloud  against  this 
violation  of  the  laws  of  nature  and  humanity?  I 
doubt  not  there  are  present  here,  this  evening,  at 
least  one  hundred  from  among  ourselves,  who,  ei- 
ther in  their  immediate  or  remoter  ancestors,  have 
suffered  from  these  persecutions;  murdered;  driven 
from  their  homes;  their  goods  confiscated;  their 
houses  burned  over  them  at  midnight;  or  in  some 
other  form  made  to  suffer  the  terrible  vengeance  of 
this  ruthless  power.  There  is  not  a  city  in  all 
Protestant  Europe,  where  the  exiled  Hugonot  may 
not,  at  this  day,  be  found;  and,  in  this  land  of  ours, 
what  a  long  and  bright  array  of  noble  nnmes  might 
I  not  enumerate  this  evening, — the  Hugers,  the 
Grimkes,  the  Ramseys,  of  the  South, — not  to  men- 
tion the  representatives  now  living  in  our  own  city, 
of  old  Hugonot  families,  whose  decapitated  names 
still  retain  enough  to  indicate  their  noble  origin, 
and  at  least  remain  a  living  and  abiding  type  of 
the  sufferings  their  families  endured,  when  driven 
into  long  exile  from  the  fair  plains  of  their  own 
beautiful  France,  by  the  savage  cruelty  of  their  fe- 
rocious persecutors.  It  hath  been  calculated  that 
at  least  fifty  millions  of  human  beings  have  fallen 
victims  to  this  relentless  principle— fifteen  hundred 
thousand  Moors  and  two  millions  of  Jews  in  Spain 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  47 

alone.  Strike  from  these  numbers  as  you  may, 
and  enough  remain  to  sicken  the  heart,  and  curdle 
the  blood  with  honor.  A  Catholic  Historian  in- 
forms us  that,  in  the  Netherlands  alone,  in  thirty- 
eight  years,  the  number  of  those  who  were  hanged, 
beheaded,  burned,  and  buried  alive  for  Heresy, 
was  at  least  fifty  thousand.  The  Abbe  Condilac 
informs  us  that,  on  tSt.  Bartholomew's  nighty  sev- 
enty thousand  were  murdered  in  Paris,  while  other 
accounts  increase  the  number  to  an  hundred  thou- 
sand; and,  during  the  subsequent  butcheries,  it  has 
been  calculated  that  nine  hundred  thousand  Protes- 
tants lost  their  lives  in  France,  while  it  is  well  as- 
certained, that  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantz  expelled  near  one  million  from  their  homes, 
almost  depopulated  some  of  the  most  populous  cities 
of  Southern  France,  crippled  her  manufactures, 
filled  whole  regiments  of  foreign  armies  with  her 
exiled  subjects,  and,  by  a  righteous  retribution, 
inflicted  upon  her  national  prosperity  and  power  a 
blow  from  which  she  has  never  since  recovered. 
The  Spanish  Inquisition,  in  a  period  of  a  little  more 
than  three  hundred  years,  punished,  in  various 
ways, — imprisonment,  torture,  death, — from  four 
hundred  and  fifty  to  five  hundred  thousand  men. 
"But  why  charge  upon  the  doctrines  of  the  Church, 
or  upon  the  Church  herself,  the  cruelties  inflicted 
by  the  civil  government,  or  by  the  passions  of  the 
people,  in  these  different  lands?"  Grant  the  truth 
of  the  proposition  upon  which  this  question  is 
manifestly  based,  yet  it  does  not  in  the  slightest 
degree  affect  my  argument.  I  am  now  inquiring 
into  the  practical  effect  of  this  principle  upon  all 


48  THE    RIGHT  OF 

who  embrace  it — the  natural,  spontaneous,  univer- 
sal interpretation,  by  the  Priesthood  and  the  People, 
where  other  causes  do  not  interfere;  and  I  summon, 
this  night,  as  witnesses  on  my  behalf,  the  tens  of 
thousands  employed  in  these  persecutions,  the  rail- 
lions  of  their  nation  who  authorized  and  sustained 
them  in  it,  the  public  authorities  of  the  Church, 
who  sanctioned  by  their  approbation,  and  consecra- 
ted with  their  blessing,  the  ghosts  of  those  mur- 
dered millions  in  their  blood  and  gore —  I  summon 
all  to  testify,  that  this  has  been  the  prevalent, 
the  practical  interpretation  of  the  doctrine. 

But  is  not  the  Church  involved  directly?  Let 
us  see.  The  Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew! — a  word 
in  which  all  horrors  meet  and  blend!  When  Mira- 
beau  would  awe  down  the  aspirations  of  the  Priest- 
hood, and  of  the  haughty  Aristocracy  with  whom 
they  were  in  league,  and  make  the  blood  of  his  au- 
dience alternately  boil  with  indignation  and  curdle 
with  horror,  he  would  shake  that  huge  head  of  his, 
and  fix  his  fiery  eye,  and  point  his  uplifted  finger  to 
the  very  window  of  the  Palace  from  which  Charles 
IX.  issued  his  infernal  orders  on  that  bloody 
night,  and,  in  his  deepest  tones,  would  whisper, 
"St.  Bartholomew!" 

When  the  infuriated  mob,  in  the  French  Revo- 
lution, gave  in  some  small  proportion  to  the  Priest- 
hood the  same  chalice  of  tears  of  blood  which  they 
had  so  often  mingled  to  the  brim  for  others,  and 
vainly  strove  to  rival  for  a  season  the  demoniac 
cruelties  which  they  for  centuries  had  practised, 
they  murmured  darkly  to  each  other  as  they  pass- 
ed, "Remember  St.  Bartholomew,"  "They  sang 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  49 

last  night  the  same  Hymn  which  prepared  the  mas- 
sacre of  St.  Bartholomew,"  "Remember,  remem- 
ber St.  Bartholomew."  All  the  furies  of  Hell 
eemed  that  night  to  hover  over  Paris;  each  sev- 
eral crime  that  hath  stained  the  annals  of  our  race, 
brought  its  own  hue  of  blackness  to  heighten  the 
accumulated  horrors  of  the  scene.  Hypocrisy — 
Treachery  — Falsehood  —  Perjury — Cowardice — 
Cruelty — Fratricide —  Murder  —  Abused  Friend- 
ship—Violated Confidence — Broken  Oaths — Help- 
less and  Confiding  Innocence  butchered  at  the 
Fireside  and  the  Altar — every  crime  which  God 
and  man  abhor—  which  Religion  denounces  and 
Nature  shudders  at — all  were  gathered  into  that 
single  night,  and  over  all  was  thrown  the  sanctity 
of  Religion.  They  celebrated  High  Mass  to  pie- 
pare  them  for  the  work  of  death.  The  very  bell 
that  calls  our  childhood  to  the  house  of  God  for 
prayer  on  holy  days,  was  tolled  as  a  signal 
for  the  Butchery,  and  the  cries  of  murdered 
thousands  mingled  with  the  voice  of  fanatic  prayer 
and  praise.  And  how  was  all  this  received  at 
Rome?  If  Paris  was  drunk  with  Blood,  Rome  was 
still  more  drunken  with  Joy.  The  gray  head  of 
the  old  Admiral  Coligny — one  of  the  noblest  and 
bravest  men  that  ever  fought  for  a  cowardly  and 
perjured  Prince,  or  died  for  the  rights  of  con- 
science— was  embalmed  in  precious  spices,  and 
borne  (like  the  head  cf  John  the  Baptist,  on  a 
charger,  to  Herod  and  his  chief  men,)  to  the  great 
World-Butcher  at  Rome.  The  messenger  who 
bore  the  joyful  tidings  received  a  thousand  crowns 
for  his  reward.     The  Pope  and  all  his  Cardinals 


50  THE    RIGHT   OP 

marched  in  solemn  and  devout  procession  to  St. 
Mark,  and  sang  Te  Deum  for   the  Butchery — 

"  Called  on  God  to  bless 

Damnations's  deeds  and  works  of  devilishness." 

Nay,  the  Pope  had  a  triumphant  medal  struck,  in 
memory  of  the  event.  On  the  one  side  was  the 
Pope's  Head,  with  this  inscription  written  in  Latin, 
"Gregorious  xin.  Pontifex  Maximus;"  and  on  the 
other,  a  Destroying  Angel,  with  the  Cross  in  one 
hand,  and  a  SwOrd  in  the  other,  slaying  the  Pro- 
testants, and  this  inscription,  "Hugonotorum  Stra- 
ges."  The  Slaughter  of  the  Hugonots!  Oh,  Gre- 
gory! Gregory  !  Thou  thirteenth  of  the  name!— 
why  strike  that  medal  to  record  thine  infamy?  Did 
you  think  it  could  ever  be  forgotten?  Is  it  not  en- 
graven here,  deep  in  the  hearts  of  men?  Is  it  not 
recorded  there,  high  in  the  Archives  of  Heaven? 
Has  not  the  Echo  of  it  gone  far  and  wide  over  the 
Earth,  and  its  loud  reverberations,  as  they  roll  down 
the  waste  of  centuries,  and  gather  fresh  echos  from 
each  noble  and  manly  bosom,  have  they  not  long 
since  rung  the  Knell  of  Papal  Supremacy  and  Pa- 
pal Power? 

But  again:  The  Inquisition!  "The  cruelties  of 
the  Inquisition,"  say  the  apologists  of  Rome,  "have 
been  greatly  exaggerated,  both  as  to  their  number 
and  their  enormity;  nay,  the  very  secresy  which 
veiled  their  proceedings  renders  it  impossible  to 
ascertain  the  truth  of  the  charges  against  them." 
This  is  surely  the  apology  of  the  murderer,  who, 
when  arrested  for  numerous  and  diabolic  deeds  of 
blood,  should  acknowledge  the  fact  of  frequent 
bloodshed,  yet  charge  the  witnesses  with  perjury 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  51 

because  he  did  his  work  at  midnight,  and  no  eye 
but  the  eye  of  God  had  seen  the  numbers  that  he 
slew.  But  the  apology,  poor  as  it  is,  is  not  true. 
God  is  terrible  in  his  Justice,  and  the  eye  which 
beholds  the  deeds  of  darkness,  is  united  with  an 
arm  that  can  rend  the  veil  of  secrecy,  and  drag 
out  hideous  crimes  to  the  gaze  and  the  execration 
of  mankind.  The  French  troops  twice  broke  in- 
to the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition,  and  all  that  im- 
agination had  conceived  or  terror  described,  or 
credulity  believed — or  madness,  in  its  wildest  par- 
oxysms, had  darkly  muttered — was  equalled,  if  not 
surpassed,  by  the  terrible  reality.  Four  hundred 
persons  were  found  confined  in  one,  and  among 
them  forty  females,  imprisoned  without  even  a 
charge  of  heresy,  and  for  purposes  which  they 
shuddered  to  reveal.  "But  the  Spanish  Inquisi- 
tion was  not  a  Roman  Institution,  and  the  fault  lies 
at  the  door  of  the  cruel  and  bigotted  civil  govern- 
ors of  Spain."  For  answer,  we  would  simply  in- 
quire, "What  was  the  Inquisition?  Was  it  a  civil 
or  ecclesiastical  institution?  Did  it  arrest  men  for 
treason  or  for  heresy?  Who  appointed  its  officers? 
Who  authorized  their  proceedings?  Who  threw 
an  impenetrable  veil  of  secresy  over  their  darkest, 
bloodiest  deeds,  and  lent  to  their  persons  and  their 
office,  that  awful  and  mysterious  sanction  of  Reli- 
gion, which  made  men  speak  in  whispers,  as  they 
approached;  and  when  they  heard,  even  in  their 
most  secret  retirement,  of  some  new  arrest  for  her- 
esy, made  "the  boldest  hold  his  breath  for  a  time." 
Was  it  not  the  Pope?  Who  alone  could  visit  their 
dungeons,  arrest  their  sentences  and  punish  their 


£2  THE    RIGHT  OF 

-crimes?  The  Pope.  But,  did  he?  No.  The 
cries  of  the  suffering  victims  came  to  Rome,  and 
it  was  music  to  his  ears;  the  smoke  of  burning 
hetacombs  was  wafted  to  the  Palace  of  St.  Peter, 
and  was  a  sweet  savor  in  his  nostrils.  It  is  the 
nature  of  all  beasts  of  piey,  that  the  sight  or  taste 
of  blood  converts  desire  into  uncontrollable  fury. 
So  it  was  with  Pope  Paul  the  Third.  He  could  no 
longer  yield  to  the  Spanish  monks,  tho  exclusive 
enjoyment  of  torture.  He  removed  the  Inquisi- 
tion to  Rome — proclaimed  himself  chief  Inquisitor 
for  all  the  world.  He  claimed  a  monopoly  in 
blood — took  out  a  patent  right  for  murder — to  do 
it  at  the  shortest  notice — on  the  slightest  pretexts, 
in  the  most  terrific  forms,  and  after  the  Gddliest 
fashion,  with  saintly  processions  and  solemn  sighs 
and  groans,  and  all  the  imagery  of  terror;  that  thus 
the  sufferings  of  the  sinner  here  might  be  a  live- 
ly and  edifying  type  of  the  horrors  of  the  damned. 
What  shall  we  say  of  the  persecuting  civil  govern- 
ment now?  Behold,  here  it  is  at  Rome,thecentre  of 
unity — where  all  civil  and  ecclesiastical  power  are 
happily  united  in  the  chair  of  St.  Peter,  and  di- 
vine infallibility  guides  and  harmonizes  all.  Was 
it  not  here — in  Rome,  that  Galileo  was  arraigned 
— tried — convicted,  and  by  a  decision,  in  which 
brutal  ignorance  was  blended  with  savage  barbar- 
ity, condemned  to  the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition? 
And  for  what?  For  teaching  that  men  might  mur- 
der their  neighbors,  on  account  of  heresy?  For 
any  violation  of  faith  or  morals?  No! — For  daring 
to  interpret  God's  works,  as  Luther  did  his  word, 
and  teaching  that  the  Earth  was  not  the  centre  of 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  53 

the  Universe,  but  revolves  around  the  Sun!  Here 
it  is  easy  to  perceive  how  the  central  error  of  the 
Papal  System  necessarily  extends  its  influence  over 
all  earthly  interests,  and  rears  its  gigantic  form, 
clothed  with  terror  and  dripping  with  blood,  di- 
rectly in  the  pathway  of  all  human  improvement 
— of  all  free  inquiry  and  independent  action,  in 
Science  and  Government,  as  well  as  in  Religion. 

The  length  of  our  preceding  remarks  will  re- 
quire us  to  pass  with  great  rapidity  over  that  por- 
tion of  our  subject  which  still  remains  to  be  consi- 
dered. We  can  not  pause  even  to  mention  the 
various  Papal  Bulls,  in  which  his  Holiness  has  con- 
descended to  consign,  with  the  most  hideous  curses, 
various  obnoxious  individuals  to  eternal  torments. 
You  all  remember,  that  he  has  extended,  again  and 
again,  (in  the  Bull,  "bi  Coenam  Domini"  for  in- 
stance, which  is  repeated  publicly  every  year  at 
Rome)  the  same  awful  execiation  against  the  whole 
Protestant  World.  He  has  pursued  us  with  his 
curses  to  the  remotest  quarters  of  the  Globe — as 
far  as  the  reverberations  of  the  Papal  thunders 
reach.  He  "has  cursed  us,  in  every  article  and  par- 
ticle of  the  man — most  scientifically,  most  psycho- 
logically, most  anatomically.  In  every  limb  of  the 
body,  and  every  faculty  of  the  soul;  in  every  bone, 
muscle,  sinew,  tendon,  joint,  ligament;  in  every 
nerve,  vein,  artery,  gland,  fibre,  tissue;  in  every 
organ,  and  in  every  function  of  each  organ;  cursed 
us  from  the  crown  of  the  head  to  the  sole  of  the 
foot;  cursed  us  through  time;  and  through  all  eter- 
nity cursed  us;  a  curse  so  ferocious  in  the  spirit 
which  it  breathes,  so  wildlv  terrible  in  its  frantic 
b2 


54  THE   EIGHT   OF 

exaggerations,  that  even  Grecian  Tragedy,  in  the 
boldest  efforts  of  creative  genius,  when  she  would 
pourtray  human  passion,  stung  to  superhuman  rage 
by  the  avenging  furies,  has  nothing  half  so  horrible. 
These  Bulls  of  the  Popes,  when  not  rejected  by 
the  Church,  are  admitted  to  be  the  authorized  ex- 
position of  her  principles. 

Of  the  Councils  to  which  I  might  refer  in  con- 
firmation of  these  views,  I  shall  notice  only  the 
fourth  Lateran  Council,  and  that  which  met  at 
Constance.  Concerning  both  of  these,  it  was  ad- 
mitted by  Dr.  Crotty,  on  oath  before  a  committee 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  that  they  had  passed 
persecuting  edicts.  It  is  admitted,  on  all  hands, 
that  at  Constance  John  Huss  was  tried  and  burned 
for  heresy,  and  this  in  violation  of  the  Emperor's 
safe  conduct,  or  written. imperial  promise  that  he 
should  not  be  injured.  But  say  our  Papal  adver- 
saries, "The  Council  only  condemned  him — it  was 
'the  Emperor  who  burned  him."  Grant  the  truth 
of  the  apology,  and  to  what  does  it  amount?  That 
the  Emperor  was  executioner  for  the  Council!  It 
is  the  difference  between  the  guilt  of  the  Judge 
who  unjustly  condemns,  and  that  of  the  Sheriff  who 
executes  the  judgment!.  Did  not  the  Council  declare 
the  safe  conduct  of  the  Emperor  void!  Void  as 
to  what?  Surely  as  to  the  purpose  for  which  it 
was  given.  Arid  what  was  this  purpose?  Not  to 
prevent  an  invesigation  of  his  doctrines;  (it  was 
to  insure  this  that  the  safe  conduct  was  given;)  but 
to  save  his  life.  In  declaring  the  safe  conduct 
void,  therefore  they  declared  that  his  life  must  be 
taken.     This  simple  reasoning  from  the  acknow- 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  55 

ledged  facts,  involves  the  Council  in  all  the  guilt  of 
his  murder.  But  we  are  not  left  to  inference  on 
this  point.  There  is  a  subsequent  decree  of  the 
same  Council,  in  which  they  deliberately  assume 
the  whole  guilt  of  that  perfidious  and  cruel  trans- 
action, and  brand  every  man  as  a  heretic  and  trai- 
tor who  disapproves  any  part  of  the  procedure.  It 
seems  there  was  a  murmur  of  indignation  and  hor- 
ror through  the  crowd — and  men  whispered  darkly 
to  each  other  that  the  Emperor's  safe  conduct  to 
John  Huss  had  been  basely  violated.  After  reci- 
ting these  facts,  the  Council  proceed  to  say:  "Yet 
the  aforesaid  John  Huss,  by  his  pertinacious  oppo- 
sition to  the  orthodox  faith,  had  rendered  himself 
incapable  of  any  safe  conduct  or  privilege;  nor 
could  any  faith  or  promise  be  observed  with  him, 
by  any  law,  natural,  divine  or  human,  in  preju- 
dice of  the  Catholic  Faith:  therefore,  the  aforesaid 
Holy  Synod,  by  the  tenor  of  these  presents,  declares 
that  the  aforesaid  invincible  Prince  did  what  was 
lawful,  and  what  became  his  royal  majesty,  respect- 
ing the  said  John  Huss,  notwithstanding  the  above 
mentioned  safe  conduct,  and  decrees  and  ordains 
for  each  and  every  true  Christian,  that  heieafter 
no  one  shall  detract  or  speak  injuriously  of  the  Sa- 
cred Council,  or  his  royal  majesty,  concerning  the 
transactions,  in  relation  to  the  said  John  Huss.  But 
whoever  shall  do  to  the  contrary,  let  him  be  pun- 
ished without  mercy,  as  a  favorer  of  heretical 
pravity,  and  guilty  of  treason." 

We  shall  now  give  you  the  persecuting  decrees 
of  the  fourth  Lateran  Council,  not  in  the  revolting 
language  of  the  original,  but  as  softened,  palliated 


56  THE    RIGHT   OF 

and  veiled  over  by  theringenious  plausibility  of 
Bishop  England:  "We  now  come,"  says  his  Grace, 
"to  examine  what  are  called  the  'persecuting  lawn 
of  our  Church." 

"In  the  year  1215,  at  the  Council  of  Lateran," certain  he- 
resies were  condemned  by  the  first  canon. 

"  In  its  third  canon  it  excommunicates  those  heretics,  ajid 
declares  them  to  be  separated  from  the  body  of  the  church. 
Then  follows  a  direction,  that  the  heretics  so  ^condemned  are 
to  be  given  up  to  the  secular  powers,  or  to  their  bailiffs,  to  be 
duly  punished.  This  direction  continues  to  require  of  all 
bishops  and  others  having  authority,  to  make  due  search 
within  their  several  districts  for  those  heretics,  and  if  they 
will  not  be  induced  to  retract  their  errors,  desires  that  they 
should  be  delivered  over  to  be  punished.  There  is  an  in- 
junction then  to  all  temporal  lords  to  cleanse  their  dominions 
by  exterminating  those  heretics:  and  if  they  will  not,  within 
a  year  from  having  been  so  admonished  by  the  church,  cleanse 
their  lands  of  this  heretical  filth,  they  shall  be  deprived  if 
they  have  superior  lords,  and  if  they  be  superior  lords  and 
be  negligent,  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  metropolitan  and  his 
provincial  bishops  to  excommunicate  them,  and  if  any  one  of 
those  lords  paramount  so  excommunicated  for  this  negligence 
shall  continue  during  twelve  months  under  the  excommuni- 
cation, the  metropolitan  shall  certify  the  same  to  the  pope, 
who,  finding  admonition  useless,  shall  depose  this  prince,  and 
absolve  his  subjects  from  their  oaths  of  fealty,  and  deliver  the 
territory  over  to  Catholics,  and  who  having  exterminated  the 
heretics  shall  remain  in  peaceable  possession." 

In  defence  of  this  barbarous  edict,  by  which 
whole  districts  were  consigned  to  fire  and^sword, 
for  no  other  reason  given,  but  the  crime  of  heresy, 
his  Grace  urges,  Frst,  that  the  Council  had  no 
right,  human  or  divine,  to  pass  it.  Strange  absurd- 
ity, indeed!  Why,  this  is  the  very  charge  we  bring 
against  it!     Would  it  not   have  better  suited  his 


PRIVATE    JUDGMENT.  57 

purpose  to  prove  that  they  had  an  undoubted  right, 
and  only  erred  in  the  mode  of  exercising  it? 

Secondly,  That  it  was  designed  only  to  murder 
these  especial  heretics,  and  not  extended  unto  all. 
But  is  not  this  the  nature  of  every  iniquitous  deci- 
sion, that  it  affects  only  those  whom  it  does  affect? 
Besides,  do  numbers  affect  principles?  Has  Right, 
political  or  moral,  become  a  matter  of  arithmetical 
calculation?  If  Albigenses  and  VValdenses  may  be 
robbed  and  murdered  for  heresy,  why  not  Armi- 
nians,  Lutherans,  Calvinists? 

Thirdly,  That  this  was  a  decision  of  the  Lay- 
men present,  and  not  of  the  Infallible  Council. 
Answer.  First — It  is  a  mere  conjecture  at  best, 
and  does  not  profess  to  rest  on  any  historical  basis. 
Second — It  is  contradicted  by  the  Record,  which 
gives  it  as  a  canon  of  the  Council;  as  -such,  it  is 
quoted  by  Bishop  England  himself;  and  this  re- 
cord, so  slanderous,  if  false,  has  never  been  dis- 
claimed or  suppressed  by  the  Roman  Church;  but, 
at  the  bar  of  public  opinion,  she  hath  suffered  judg- 
ment to  go  against  her,  by  default,  upon  documents 
which,  according  to  this  statement,  are  forged — 
and  whether  forged  or  genuine,  need  only  to  be 
authoritatively  disclaimed.  But,  Fourth:  He  boldly 
asserts  (with  the  approbation  of  Bishops  Purcell 
and  Hughes,)  that,  by  whomsoever  issued,  the  de- 
cree, in  itself,  is  right.  "I  may,  however,  be  per- 
mitted to  say,  that,  in  my  opinion,  the  existence  of 
civilized  society  required  its  enactment."  Look 
back,  now,  at  the  atrocious  requirements  of  this 
decree,  and  then  ask  yourself,  Where  was  this  au- 
dacious avowal  made?     Was  it  in  some  remote  cor- 


58  THE    RIGHT    OF 

ner  of  the  land,  where  the  light  of  knowledge  sel- 
dom and  slowly  penetrates?  Was  it  whispered  un- 
der the  seal  of  the  Confessional?  Was  it  muttered, 
under  the  influence  of  high  excitement,  in  one  of 
those  armed  forts,  which  they  have  manned  with  a 
foreign  soldiery,  in  our  own  streets,  to  shoot  our 
own  citizens?  No;  it  was  uttered  in  the  broad  light 
of  day,  by  one  of  the  most  distinguished  Prelates 
of  the  Church,  in  the  presence  of  the  Senators  and 
Representatives  of  these  United  States,  in  the  Hall 
of  Representatives  assembled,  and  with  the  admir- 
ing applause  of  these  faithful  guardians  of  the  pub- 
lic liberties. 

And  what  is  the  pretext  for  this  unparalleled 
atrocity,  which  thus,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  en- 
dorses the  darkest  and  bloodiest  deeds  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages — the  wholesale  butchery  of  defenceless 
thousands?  The  reason  might  almost  excite  a 
smile  upon  the  cheek  of  terror.  It  is,  that  they 
were  uncommon  heretics — extremely  heretical, 
indeed — that  they  rejected  marriage,  as  the  Priests 
do  themselves,  and  were  Manicheans — one  branch 
in  fine,  of  that  old  Gnostic  school,  from  whose 
eastern  philosophy  sprang  the  whole  Monkish  Sys- 
tem, with  its  convents  and  nunneries,  and  half  the 
follies  which  Popery  has  substituted  for  the  Gos- 
pel. But  the  pretext,  foolish  as  it  is,  is  worse  than 
foolish.  It  is  absolutely  false — false  as  the  pur- 
pose for  which  it  was  invented  is  execrable. — 
There  never  lived,  since  the  days  of  the  Apostles 
— unless,  perhaps,  we  ma}'-  except  our  Puritan  fa- 
thers— there  never  ^breathed  upon  the  face  of  the 
earth,  which  they  blessed  with  their  presence — a 


PRIVATE   JUDGMENT.  59 

holier,  purer,  more  religious  race.  They  had  the 
Bible  in  their  memories,  which  they  dared  not 
keep  in  their  houses — their  very  women  and  chil- 
dren refuted  Bishops  by  quoting  at  pleasure  from 
God's  word — and  I  could  recite  this  evening,  for 
an  hour  in  your  hearing,  whole  passages  from  Ca- 
tholic writers,  attesting  the  spotless  innocence  of 
this  butchered  and  then  slandered  people.  But 
these  have  ever  been  the  tactics  of  persecution — 
first,  to  murder  and  then  to  slander-— to  destroy 
one's  goods,  and  then  his  character.  The  wolf, 
when  he  would  devour  the  lamb,  charged  the  lat- 
ter with  polluting  the  stream  which  he  had  him- 
self defiled.  The  serpent,  before  he  swallows  his 
prey,  covers  over  with  his  own  filthy  slime,  the 
crushed  limbs  of  the  victim  which  he  hath  stran- 
gled with  his  folds.  Nay,  it  is  curious  to  remark, 
that  the  most  enormous  crimes  ever  hinted  against 
these  innocent  followers  of  Christ,  as  a  prerext  for 
this  wholesale  butchery,  are  borrowed  from  the  an- 
cient accusations,  made  against  the  early  Chris- 
tians, by  their  heathen  persecutors.  "Those  Chris- 
tians are  atheists  and  despisers  of  the  gods,"  said  the 
Priest — "And  enemies  of  Caesar,"  cried  the  mag- 
istrate. "In  their  midnight  assemblies,  are  exhi- 
bited scenes  of  licentiousness,  at  which  the  day 
would  blush" — exclaims  one.  "And  in  their  hel- 
lish orgies,  they  devour  young  children,  and  swear 
horrid  oaths  as  they  drink  their  young  blood,"  re- 
plies another.  "Yes,  and  I  saw  it,"  swears  a  third. 
"Away  with  such  men  from  the  face  of  the  earth," 
cry  all  together — "the  good  of  society  requires 
their  destruction." 


60  THE  RIGHT   OF 

And  now,  "Watchman!  what  of  the  night?" 
Shall  this  doctrine  of  darkness  once  more  over- 
spread the  globe?  Shall  this  colossal  tyranny  once 
more  tread  down  the  nations  beneath  its  ponderous 
footsteps,  crushing  the  rights  of  conscience,  stifling 
all  freedom  of  inquiry,  and  bringing  back  "the 
reign  of  Night,  and  Night's  daughter,  Ignorance?  " 
We  answer,  earnestly,  solemnly,  with  deep  convic- 
tion, with  calm  yet  firm  assurance,  NO.  In  the 
name  of  Humanity  and  Religion;  in  the  name  of 
Outraged  Reason  and  Violated  Rights;  in  the 
name  of  our  dead  Fathers,  and  our  unborn  Chil- 
dren; in  the  name  of  God,  our  Creator,  and  of  the 
whole  Human  Race,  our  brethren,  we  answer,  NO. 
From  the  Heavens  and  from  the  Earth;  from  the 
distant  Past;  from  the  hopeful  Present;  from  the 
depths  of  the  unfathomable  Future;  from  the  graves 
of  martyred  millions;  from  every  field  where  Free- 
dom hath  been  cloven  down,  or  Tyranny  hath 
erected  her  trophies;  where  Religion  has  had  her 
martyrs,  or  Bigotry  hath  offered  up  her  victims, 
Old  History  lifts  up  her  warning  voice,  and  Pro- 
phecy utters  her  awful  denunciations,  and  angelic 
voices  mingle  with  the  Jubilee  of  Earth,  as  the 
loud  response  comes  sweeping  over  land  and  sea, 
like  the  roar  of  many  waters — like  the  peal  of  ten 
thousand  thunders — NO.     "Babylon  the  Great 

IS    FALLEN — FALLEN — FALLEN!" 

True — there  is  a  momentary  revival — a  terrible 
death-struggle.  A  violent  rush  of  the  accumula- 
ted blood  from  the  convulsed  heart  to  the  remotest 
extremities.  It  is  the  way  of  all  Superstitions — 
they  die  hard.  The  expiring  lamp  blazes  up  bright- 


PRIVATE  JUDGMENT.  61 

ly,  in  its  socket,  before  it  is  extinguished  forever. 
The  dying  giant  lifts  himself  fiercely  on  his  couch 
— looks  wildly  around  in  his  fury' — starts  to  his 
feet,  brandishes  once  more  his  brawny  limbs,  and 
sinks  down  with  a  groan.  It  was  the  energy  of 
spasm,  and  not  of  healthy  life.  The  old  heathen 
Superstition'  died  just  so;  its  hands  red  with  Chris- 
tian blood.  A  spasmodic^revival  after  a  long  de- 
cline— apparently  vigorous  to  the  last.  So  well 
does  the  hectic  of  decay  sometimes  mimic  the 
bloom  of  youth — and  the  mad  energy  of  incurable 
disease  and  approaching  dissolution,  often  surpass, 
for  a  season,  the  mightiest  efforts  of  heroic  courage 
and  manly  strength!  c 


